Every business that adopts Information Technology and is data-intensive, will benefit from Information Lifecycle Management. Information, being the most valuable asset of businesses, managing it will benefit the business in multiple ways.
Digitization of information and processing it will make better use of data offering
valuable insights into the business operations and cash flow. Data security and data
archiving have their evident advantages that every business benefits from. As the
information flows through various related processes, it adds value to the business
by offering in-depth details to the management regarding the processes that
created it and also the ones using it.
For different verticals or industries, data hold an important, but different value.
Considering its importance, let us closely analyze how ILM benefits particular
industries impeccably.

ILM for Banking

Banks deal with huge volumes of data that needs to be dealt with utmost care. With
a large percentage of banks across the world adopting digital transformation,
there’s a lot of classified information that banks are dealing with on a daily basis.
We are talking about billions and trillions that are transacted digitally through the
banks. That’s a lot of money and information to deal and hence, banks are fast-
adopting ILM to deal with such voluminous data and its security. The banks benefit
from ILM in 3 major aspects – Classification, Archiving and Security.

Data Classification
Banks need to manage a lot of information. There are customers, their personal
details such as the contact, ID proof, etc., their accounts, and the transactions
happening in each account on a daily basis. This becomes huge when it comes to
business accounts as they will have a lot of transactions happening on a daily basis.
Similarly, for every transaction, there may be various levels, such as requests,
authentications, approvals, and sanction which also need to be tracked diligently.
Unless these are stored in a classified way, it becomes very difficult for the bank to
manage the information and use it for transaction processing and analytics. Data
classification makes sure that information is stored in a categorized manner, which
is technically called normalized way, which reduces redundancy and increases the
efficiency of data management. When all the information is stored efficiently, they
can be used for effective analytics.

Data Security
With the increasing popularity of the internet and upcoming technologies, we see
that there are more technology enthusiasts. The other side of this popularity is that
there’s an increasing number of cyber attacks too, which is a matter to worry about
data-intensive businesses. Since most of the banks offer online banking facilities,
they have to deal with security intelligence and online archiving. When it comes to
banks, a cyber attack is highly alarming because it involves not only data stealth, it
would invariably involve large amounts of money too. Many eCommerce websites offer online payment gateways. Though most of them use third-party payment gateways that are well-secured, some of the eCommerce sites are spurious.
Hackers may be using such sites to steal information and plan larger cyber hacks to
steal money. Data security is thus one of the major aspects for banks to consider
and hence benefit greatly from information lifecycle management.

Data Archiving
With large volumes of data that’s growing constantly on a daily basis, the banks
need to archive data. Banks also need to archive the communications that are much
required. Email archiving is a must for banks as every transaction has to be tracked
closely from end to end and many important messages are sent by email. Moreover,
banks need to store archived data for compliance-related matters also. Data
archiving is also a form of security as a large chunk of base data is archived and
stored safely away from the main data. This makes sure that data is not accessed in
an unauthorized manner.

ILM for Telecom

How much time do you spend on your mobile? For people who are using
smartphones, they spend anywhere between 12 to 15 hours on the mobile using the
internet, making calls, sending messages and using the apps. Every second you
spend on your mobile is data for the telecom company. This results in large volumes
of data which needs to be classified, stored, archived and presented to the
management. In the Telecom industry, data classification, security, archiving and
application retirement play a major role.
Data classification and security for Telecom are tackled in the same way as the
banking industry. ILM offers a complete solution to manage the Telecom industry’s
voluminous information base. Telecom, particularly benefits from Data archiving
and Application retirement.

Data Archiving
The most challenging aspect of data-management for telecom is the large volume
of data that they generate. They need to separate what’s more needed and relevant
and the obsolete data. When it comes to Telecom, they also need to remove the
obsolete data after the stipulated time. Managing large volumes of data in the
telecom industry is done using data subsets. From large volumes of information,
data is archived for effective data management. Smaller subsets of data are
maintained instead as test data for larger sets that are archived. When data is
searched, the subsets are checked and if found in them, the corresponding archives
are retrieved. Data subsets make data retrieval and storage more efficient. It also
speeds up the processing.

Application Retirement
The changing technologies result in the need for newer tools and applications to
manage information. Technology changes trigger application retirement, which is
decommissioning legacy software to welcome newer technologies. But the
information should be carefully archived before application retirement so that they
can be used later for various analytics and comparisons. This is another important
aspect where ILM benefits the Telecom industry.

ILM for Governance

Every government deals with large volumes of information. There’s data about the
population, rules and regulations, various requests, sanctions, and orders passed,
employee details and trillions of other records managed on a daily basis. Most of
this information is classified and need to be well-secured. Governance can make
complete use of ILM when implemented diligently. We have already seen how data
classification, archiving, security and application retirement help various businesses.
In governance, there’s a lot of information collected which is classified and stored in
archives with subsets for easy retrieval. Data security has to be given utmost
importance as the entire state or country’s affairs are affected otherwise. Another
interesting aspect of ILM, which is known as Data Masking, benefits the
governments largely.

Data Masking
Data masking hides the actual data and offers a copy of information for authorized
users to peruse. This makes sure that whoever is seeking information and are
authorized to view it will be offered a copy to view. They cannot make any change
to the information, which makes it secure. Moreover, it makes data processing
faster as such copies need only fixed space which can be allocated outside the main
server. Accessing them will not affect the data server which actually stores the
information. This reduces the load on the information server, which renders the data
and processes much faster while also protects the information.

Conclusion

Data-centric industries like Banking, Telecom and Governance can make complete
use of Information Lifecycle Management and benefit largely from them. From data
collection to application retirement, these industries can manage the data flow
more diligently with ILM making them more process efficient. Faster completion of
processes will make your business more productive and offer better customer
satisfaction.