Hey, what happens to your data after you complete a project? Does it remain saved on a computer or on a cloud? It’s likely that you have obsolete, trivial, or even confidential data lingering around on your company’s storage servers.
After you complete a project, it’s always important to purge data.
Your company will likely have gathered historical data over time. You can keep what’s necessary, but it’s best to purge what you no longer need.
To avoid potential liability, you also want to purge any confidential data that is no longer needed.
Here’s how to get started with data management and purging data:
Start With Individual Data
Does your organization have spreadsheets full of personal information from different individuals?
This can include names, addresses, and the contact information of employees and customers. You might even have sensitive data such as social security numbers and bank account information.
As one can imagine, this can be a huge security risk. You should set aside time each month to purge this data. If an employee or customer leaves, you should purge this data right away.
Delete Website Data
If you have any website data you should also delete this each month. For example, you can look at this tutorial on deleting a SharePoint site.
Another task can be to delete IP addresses and anything else your website might collect.
If your website has a payment authorization service, you want to make sure you delete a customer’s financial data.
Once the payment has been received, you can keep a receipt without keeping the payment information.
For example, let’s suppose you’ve completed a project and collected the payments for this project. Once you’ve done this, you can start deleting this website data.
Data Management on the Cloud
Once per month, you can remove data from your computer and store it on a cloud storage service. At a second time during the month, look back at your data on the cloud.
You can assess what data can remain in the cloud and what can get deleted. You should put this former data in a ‘TO DELETE LATER’ folder. You can give a one-week waiting period before you delete the data.
If you have archival data, you can also store this in a separate folder. You want to check this folder on occasion to see if there’s any data to get deleted later.
Purge Data on Spreadsheets
Most organizations will have spreadsheets that contain important data for a project.
Once the project gets completed, look back at the spreadsheet. You want to see what must get archived and what to delete.
Anything to delete should first get saved onto a new spreadsheet. This way, you can recover it if needed. Wait for at least a month before you decide to purge this data.
Delete and Protect Your Data
Now that you know how to purge data and why it matters, you can take the steps for protecting your company’s data.
Your first step is to make sure you save your data on secure servers such as a cloud.
You want to focus on archiving data first before deleting it. Look at your data after finishing a project before you decide to purge it.
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