The rise in remote working: Avoid compromising your data governance

From the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, many financial services organisations (FSOs) have acted swiftly to facilitate remote working for their employees to ensure staff can work from home where possible. However, those organisations which have failed to implement sufficient data management measures have experienced an upsurge in the growth of unstructured data as a result. In this blog, we will outline how remote working has exacerbated the issue of unstructured data and why this poses a data privacy risk.

Throughout the pandemic, tech solutions have proven vital to ensure a form of business continuity for FSOs by connecting their employees with business-critical data.

This has included a significant rise in the use of video and audio calls in order to facilitate business meetings, conference calls and customer engagements.

Video and audio calls are considered examples of unstructured data as they do not have a set format for storing information in comparison to the likes of a Microsoft Excel database.

Emails, which can contain attachments such as documents, images and audio files, are also classified as unstructured data. This makes it incredibly difficult for an FSO’s data protection officer or chief risk officer to determine the value of the information held within an employees’ emails. This unknown value has the potential to lead to data privacy risks.

The prompt move to remote working has increased the potential risk for an FSO’s data governance to be compromised during a time of crisis. New data, which is created through the increased use of emails and video calls, is generated haphazardly.

However, as FSOs are heavily governed by regulatory authorities, it is imperative that the creation of new data as part of the digitisation of data and digitalisation of operational processes is appropriately managed.

At Automated Intelligence (AI), we have written and produced a white paper in partnership with Information, Governance and Risk Management Specialist, Roger Poole, detailing the issue of unstructured data within FSOs. The white paper outlines some of the ways in which unstructured data can be created by an FSO and explains how AI’s Governance, Risk and Compliance platform, AI.DATALIFT, provides a cloud-based solution to the issue of unstructured data.

AI.DATALIFT ensures that when new data is created, even during times of remote working, it is appropriately categorised and classified against an FSOs Information Governance Strategy; effectively reducing the risks associated with data privacy.

If you would like to read the white paper in full, please complete the form below.