Posts By: Laurie Fischer

For years, maybe decades, to come, we will be analyzing, examining, and dissecting the impact of COVID-19. There are sure to be many opinions and viewpoints; one thing that all the pundits will agree upon, however, is that 2020 was a time of true disruption in so many ways. It interrupted our personal and family lives and it certainly disrupted our work lives, likely changing forever the manner in which we collaborate, communicate, and connect.

At this year’s annual ARMA Live! Conference in Anaheim, we conducted an informal survey of the 300+ visitors to our booth, asking a single question: “What is your greatest information governance challenge today?” We received a variety of responses including:

October was once again packed with conferences, from large international events to smaller regional and industry-specific seminars and roundtables. If there was one word that was thematic across all of these events this year, it was “disruption.” It has lead me to ask, “what is the most disruptive innovation today related to how we manage, control and govern our information?” While the GDPR and burgeoning international, sectoral and national data privacy and security laws may first come to mind, they are reactive regulations to the growing threat of cyberattack, ransomware assaults and security breach. Responding to these malevolent actions certainly requires organizations to re-think their approach to information security and develop enhanced programs and processes, but I wouldn’t characterize these as disruptive innovations. Actual disruption is taking place right in front of us changing the way almost all of us work and interact with technology on a daily basis. It’s called...

Over the course of this IG blog series, we have examined how the IG professional can align their IG program to directly support the mission and vision of their organization. Several case studies helped illustrate how this alignment allows the IG / RIM professional to contribute to the bottom line in meaningful ways. In this post, I am taking a deeper dive into a very specific challenge that most multinational organizations face today: compliance with the soon-to-be-effective GDPR imperative. During our annual roundtable events, we surveyed clients regarding their level of engagement with their organizations’ GDPR initiatives, and learned that a surprising 45% said they had minimal to no involvement at all.

In today’s world of never-ending data growth, privacy breaches and cyber-attacks, and growing legal and regulatory oversight, an IG professional’s job is challenging enough. But when an organization acquires or divests an entity or even a product line, the IG professional faces an additional set of challenges as new data may need to be integrated into systems and applications, existing data may need to be segregated and separated, and other data may require sharing or redacting.

As data continues to grow uncontrollably in every organization today, the need for comprehensive information governance becomes increasingly apparent. Defining the rules and operating needs that govern an organization’s data, and then acting on those rules through defensible disposition, reduces the risk and cost of unnecessary storage and e-Discovery, as well as reducing the damage of a potential cyber-attack.

Last month, I had the pleasure of attending and speaking at the MER Conference in Chicago. The annual event is one of the largest educational conferences focused on addressing the ever-present challenges of managing electronic records from the legal, technical and operational perspectives.

Earlier this year, Legal IT Professionals featured an article co-authored by my colleague James Britt and me that provides a list of cybersecurity best practices global law firms should prioritize in 2017. More specifically, we discussed specific steps law firms can take to address gaps that previously provided hackers with easy access to sensitive data.

High-profile security breaches, the ever-growing volume of corporate data and increasingly complex regulatory and technical environments emphasize the need for enhanced enterprise-wide information governance (IG). The mission of many corporate law departments is to help protect their organizations from unnecessary risk and exposure. Therefore, many corporate law departments are facing increased pressure to help reduce the risk that is inherent in unmanaged and uncontrolled information.