Please tell us briefly a little bit about what Automated Intelligence does.
Automated Intelligence (AI) is a market-leading data management solution provider with significant experience supporting intelligent cloud migration and digital transformation projects across a range of industries. These include Central and Local Government, Health, Police and Commercial. Our leading enterprise software solutions helporganisations to transition from long-term suppliers to a next-generation Cloud strategy.
As our brand name suggests, Automated Intelligence’s unique cloud-based analytics and migration solution, AI.DATALIFT, leverages the latest innovations and intelligence in data management technology which enables organisations to organise, consolidate, migrate and ultimately transform their data holdings. Our powerful and intuitive data management platform includes a range of capabilities such as insights, analysis and discovery, data cleanse and ROT and migration.
Why are you looking to work with the public sector specifically and do you have many current government customers you could mention?
At Automated Intelligence, we understand that public sector organisations have increasingly gathered vast volumes of data over the years, and it has now become a priority for those organisations to understand their data, and their data management processes as part of their transformation journey. Furthermore, with growing privacy regulations, public sector organisations also have an increasing obligation to ensure that data held on citizens is for specific purpose and removed thereafter.
At Automated Intelligence, our mission is to empower organisations to take control of their data so they can take control of their future. We believe our solutions will help public sector organisations streamline their data, take control of their budgets, reduce operational costs and ensure compliance measures are in place to protect citizen data.
We work with a range of local, regional and central government customers including Somerset West and Taunton Council, Bracknell Forest Council, Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, Crossrail, Scottish Borders Council, Department for Education, DEFRA and Wiltshire Council, to name but a few.
From a service point of view, if you don’t have visibility of assets what could happen to them?
If an organisation lacks visibility of their assets and data – this can lead to lack of control and information across a growing number of data silos which leads to reduced productivity and compliance and therefore, increased risk. This ultimately impacts the quality of services and products your organisation provides.
Organisations can therefore face numerous compliance and governance challenges such as:
- Inaccurate data being provided to regulators
- Data breaches causing significant financial and reputational damage
- Over-retention of customer data
- Users unable to access the right information when they need it
- Overlooked strategic opportunities to drive and influence important business decisions
Furthermore, employees will often complain about the below pain points:
- Challenging and time consuming to discover relevant information
- Difficulty discovering or verifying the latest version of documents
- Documents are recreated because they cannot be discovered at the time of need
- Lack of clarity for labelling and storing of information to support ease of discovery
- Effective discovery is impacted due to inconsistent information sharing methods
Do you have guidance for our readers on how to achieve network and endpoint visibility? For example, what processes and tools are needed to see across multi-cloud environments?
If you liked this content…
Data security remains a priority for organisations when migrating to the cloud in order to reduce risks and vulnerabilities. The responsibility develops into a need to manage different types of environments as the organisation evolves a hybrid approach. The rise of hybrid cloud includes utilising a mix of private cloud services and third-party public services such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google, enables users to enjoy a greater range of compute capabilities and process flows.
However, providing the security needed for the most sensitive of data becomes significantly more challenging – businesses will need to acquire the ability and skill sets in-house to manage such services across different platforms. Each environment provides different strengths and weaknesses, and of course different end-points to take into account. A unified view of all informational assets throughout the full information lifecycle is a critical component to this and can reduce the burden for governance and compliance. For some organisations these functions can operate across different parts of the business, therefore layering multiple skill sets needed for different technologies risks becoming a blocker to the value of the hybrid environment.
Do you feel that regulatory compliance is helped by improved visibility?
The principal purpose of compliance functions is to monitor compliance with applicable laws and regulations. To better achieve compliance assurance, automation and built-in, customisable compliance checks for faster analysis, detection and remediation of risks and vulnerabilities is the ideal. And it is aspirational for many organisations.
However, the accumulation of data through over-preservation over years, sometimes decades, increases compliance challenges with contractual provisions associated with data privacy, furthermore, increased discovery efforts and costs in future matters, rising litigation risk and growing cyber security risks.
From an audit perspective this information becomes a liability, not an asset to the business. And of course, the risk of data breach impacts, not if, but when it happens, simply escalates.
Even without automation if an organisation has visibility, then information can be categorised and mapped to regulations, this enables preservation and presentation of relevant information, when it is needed, whether for litigation, audits or regulatory reporting.
Additionally, when unstructured data cannot be categorised according to risk it is difficult to apply adequate and appropriate resources to protect the data within. Whether ROT or valuable asset – the same protection, resources and costs are applied to all information.
This leads to either over-protection or under-protection. Over-protection prevents the business from accessing the data to drive value for achieving business goals or demonstrate compliance. The alternative, under-protection, exposes the organisation to the risk of data breach.
As a sponsor for the up-coming Think Data for Government event what message would you have for the delegates that are attending on the day?
Data is growing at an exponential rate, so it’s imperative that organisations take control of their unstructured data to reduce risks, associated costs, improve information governance and increase productivity. We’d encourage delegates to take action by using informed insights gained from discovery across legacy, hybrid and cloud environments, to enable effective decision-making, provide value and reduce risks.
