The Importance of a baseline Data Device Inventory

Regardless of the sector that you work in, it is highly likely that you will experience many of the following challenges when looking at where you store data:

  • Device inventories (servers, laptops, etc) are often incomplete, inaccurate, or don’t exist
  • An increasing data sprawl from many new and non-corporate owned assets
  • No effective way to control your data being put out in external cloud based services, and no central way to know where that has been done
  • Significant reduction in due diligence when picking new IT solutions, stranding data in obsolete systems
  • Business processes that only relate to current services and systems, with limited legacy knowledge
  • No consistent way of naming each service used

This results in significant growth and variety of assets and services where corporate data is stored

A critical foundational step for any data centric programme is to understand where in-scope data is stored, and this is achieved by having an accurate Data Device Inventory in place.

With this in place, resource effort can be prioritised according to the risk and value of data held on each device.

The Data MetaMorph Approach

Knowledge is scattered across your organisation, and have developed a process to collect and integrate the necessary information with the least impact to you.

We talk to key stakeholders across your company.

We don’t ask you to fill out forms or install software, which is time consuming.

We ask for data reports from as many relevant systems as you have.

We take the disparate data reports supplied by you and integrate them to overcome nicknames within:

  • Output from stakeholder interviews
  • IT asset reports: Network usage, backup reports, managed devices, existing Device Inventories
  • Financial reports: Fixed assets, list of services, list of external suppliers
  • Company data: Staff listing (for asset linkage)

We run a Current State workshop with the key stakeholders, to review and adjust our findings. We provide a stakeholder approved consensus of all risks & issues identified by DMM during interviews.

We produce an externally authored baseline Data Device Inventory, including assets still around relating to previous processes or acquired companies.

 

Please see the attached FYDA Data Sheet for more information on this service