Symantec Corp. announced Symantec Data Insight, a new technology that enables organizations to improve data governance through insights into the ownership and usage of unstructured data, including files such as documents, spreadsheets and emails.

Data Insight represents innovation and integration across Symantec's product portfolio in security and storage, providing organizations a unified approach to data governance. Data Insight is the only integrated technology of its kind to help organizations align their information assets to business goals by simplifying the remediation of exposed critical data and optimizing their storage environment. Symantec Data Loss Prevention is planned to be the first solution to fully integrate Data Insight followed by storage and information management solutions later this year.

"Organizations are increasingly concerned with risk mitigation and looking at data governance strategies that align with their business priorities. A fundamental requirement to good governance is defining the sensitive data and identifying data ownership," said Eric Ouellet, Research VP, Gartner. "The problem of data ownership is huge, especially in the case of unstructured data. By having insight into usage of unstructured data, enterprise organizations will be better able to identify gaps in their strategy, better equipped to define their requirements and better prepared to implement a data governance plan that will reduce their risk posture."

Data Insight and Data Loss Prevention
Data Insight will first be available as part of Symantec Data Loss Prevention and will be the only data loss prevention solution to deliver an integrated data owner and remediation capability. Unstructured data on shared file systems is a large source of critical business information, and over-exposed content presents a significant risk for data breaches. Data Insight with Symantec Data Loss Prevention helps organizations identify their most critical information and enables simplified data clean-up and remediation through automated data owner identification. Data Insight also provides continuous monitoring and auditing of data usage to help ensure adherence with corporate policies and regulatory compliance. In addition, the technology monitors who has accessed or modified individual files, and can notify information security teams and data owners that data has been exposed. Armed with visibility into who is accessing and using the information, organizations can make rule-based ownership inferences and alter access to stored data in order to prevent data breaches.

Data Insight and Storage Management
According to IDC, the amount of storage capacity shipped in support of file-based storage is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 60.1% from 2008 through 2013, a growth rate three times that of block-based storage. It is critical for organizations to optimize the storage costs associated with unstructured data by storing it on the most efficient tier throughout its lifecycle, based on a dynamic classification of its business importance. Storage teams also need to create a system of accountability for unstructured data through storage chargeback reports that outline who owns what and what it is costing the organization. The integration of Data Insight with storage and information solutions from Symantec will enable organizations to optimize their storage costs for unstructured data and make intelligent backup and recovery decisions based on context and frequency of use.

"Organizations are struggling with multiple point solutions to manage and secure their unstructured data and need products to work together to solve problems," said Greg Hughes, group president, Enterprise Product Group, Symantec. "Data Insight makes life easier for our customers by combining our security and storage prowess to improve data governance."