Cyber-attacks and data breaches are rapidly increasing in sophistication, with immense ramifications for companies and their customers. Australian companies are under greater obligation than ever to manage their customers’ Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
The obligations related to Privacy protection under the Australian Privacy Act (Commonwealth) 1988 continue to evolve and be strengthened. Additionally organisations in some industries face greater data compliance obligations (e.g. SOCI, APRA, BIM, FOI, Public records act). Compliance with the current and anticipated standards is dependent on effective information lifecycle management across both structured and unstructured data.
Astral’s PII and Privacy service offering leverages Astral’s extensive EIM experience and focuses on performing a ISO31000-aligned risk assessment on how PII is being managed, and planning how the organisation can address the identified issues and build PII information lifecycle management capability.
Structured Data: Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) Through SAP
Many organisations run their business using SAP. Information managed in SAP must be managed according to the same legislative requirements as documents stored in SharePoint or network drives.
A typical scenario we hear from our clients that use SAP is that the data is being retained in SAP indefinitely. This includes all PII. Besides risking non-compliance with Privacy obligations, without proper retention or deletion policies, this approach is consuming costly premium storage. Additionally, unencrypted data and unnecessary sharing of information across system integrations heighten the risk of data breaches.
The ILM solution resolves these challenges by:
- automating data classification,
- applying retention rules, and
- enforcing secure data encryption.
It ensures that PII is retained only as long as necessary, reducing storage costs and improving compliance. By automating secure data destruction and integrating eDiscovery functionalities, the ILM solution has minimal barriers to entry and enhances end-to-end data management, minimizing audit risks while maintaining legal and regulatory compliance.
What is ILM?
- Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) is a SAP function that enables additional capabilities for managing data from its creation to its eventual archiving or destruction
- ILM is the tool for ensuring compliance and governance throughout the data lifecycle.
- ILM applies retention rules to SAP data and facilitates its storage into a lifecycle managed repository.
- ILM enables additional capabilities not provided by classical SAP archiving including destruction, legal holds & e-discovery, data blocking, auditing, and End-of-Purpose checks
Benefits
The benefits that this service offering can deliver include:
- Data Security and Compliance: By enforcing retention, deletion, and archiving policies, ILM helps safeguard sensitive information and ensures compliance with privacy regulations
- Risk Mitigation: Proper lifecycle management ensures that obsolete data is deleted while critical data is archived securely, reducing the risk of breaches like those faced by Medibank
- Audit and Governance: Automated processes ensure data is always available for audits, preventing legal complications arising from unmanaged data
- Decommission Legacy Systems: Helps manage and decommission legacy systems by transferring essential data to a retention warehouse. This ensures that data from outdated systems is governed by modern policies
- Destruction Based on Policies: Automates the secure destruction of data based on predefined policies, ensuring that organizations remain compliant with legal and regulatory requirements
- Archiving Features:Offers robust archiving capabilities, securely transferring inactive data from databases to archives ensuring that archived data remains easily accessible when needed, without impacting system performance.
Need more information?
Contact Astral to find out more about our PII and Privacy Data Governance offering. Let us help you ensure your data is governed, secure and compliant.
