Every client we speak with has some number of network drives that every employee may put files. In many cases it is the system-of-record for important business documents. With storage now ~$25/terabyte (which means your average 500 megabyte file costs ~1/1000 of 1 cent to store on that drive) the controls, policing and discipline in how much is put on network drives has turned them into chaos.
But what is so wrong with these network drive you ask?
- No metadata – How do you know what that file represents?
- No Security – Who should have access to it? On that network drive, odds are everyone has access.
- No Searchability – Outside of how you look for files in Windows Explorer, that is it.
- What about PII/Risk – do you know how sensitive a file is when it comes to personal information?
- Version control, duplicate and beyond – How do you know if you are working with the latest version? How many times can that file be duplicated all over that network drive?
- ROT – Redundant, Obsolete and Trivial. Industry estimates over 80% of what is on network drives is ROT.
- Legal Hold – When litigation or other reason arises in making sure the file is not modified or deleted.
- Cleaning up – There is no effective way to clean up a network drive unless you know all of the above items.
And what if we are talking about using OneDrive, BOX or Dropbox?
Now this isn’t even inside your company to manage, it is out in the cloud. And they all let you put as much as you want into their repository – NO LIMIT. They feel the more you use them, the less likely you are to ever leave.
But they are easy. Easy to turn on. Easy to connect to. As long as people adhere to the folder and file naming conventions, they are good enough.
EASY IS NOT ENOUGH.
Corporations need to bring the above incremental needs to all their content. If you have terabytes of files all over your company on network drives, let InfoDNA Solutions come in and crawl these and quickly assess your exposure. With our technologies and people, we can make quick work in documenting your situation and help you get to a better place.
