Information governance and IT security have become two of the more commonly discussed matters among leaders in the public and private sectors throughout the past several years, and for good reason, as data breaches remain some of the more devastating crimes in North America and overseas. The fact remains that data breach is not an entirely avoidable risk, but it needs to be handled aggressively to control losses should an adverse event take place. 

Cloud computing has forever transformed the ways in which organizations operate, essentially acting as the foundation for virtually all of the major trends that have sprouted up in corporate IT throughout the past decade or so. Although it would be hard to make the case that the cloud is the only reason why major shifts in strategies and capabilities such as enterprise mobility have gained traction, it is objectively clear that it has played a major role in the private sector's recent progress. 

With so many firms getting involved in big data strategies given the relative ubiquity of accessible solutions, the best practices of management and optimization are beginning to transform and evolve. One of the key matters in this discussion has been the increasing need for flexible, speedy and reliable computing power to back the storage, processing, access and uptime demands of analytics strategies, and the cloud has thus far proven to be a champion in this regard. 

Legal entities tend to get held to a higher standard when it comes to data management and security practices, as virtually all of the information these organizations handle will be sensitive in one way or another. For example, even data that would be considered low-risk in other situations will not be as such when in a law firm's servers and devices, as it is likely to be pertinent to a litigation proceeding and thus must be protected more comprehensively. 

A few years back, it was somewhat challenging to recognize which movements in corporate computing would be short-lived, passing fads, and which would be transformative, operationally advantageous trends that could last. Cloud computing was certainly one of the many types of progressive technological innovations to sprout up and be called out as overly hyped by more skeptical analysts and experts, but these assessments have simply not been accurate. 

Big data is still among the hottest trends in corporate computing, but a wealth of companies do not have the time, resources or in-house talent to integrate it correctly. Not only will these solutions need to be properly set up, deployed and configured for use, they will also need continued maintenance, refinement and general optimization to continue fueling the insights that businesses need to function properly. 

Throughout the past several years, data breaches have become far more common topics in the news, as well as within discussions in both public and private-sector meetings, given how damaging the events can be to economic conditions. In many ways, it appears as though companies, consumers and perhaps even law enforcement officials and regulators have started to be a bit more desensitized and apathetic to these problems, which is only working to fan the flames in favor of cybercriminals and other threats. 

The rate of change in today’s IT landscape has led to an increase in the number of technologies, cloud initiatives, data creation, and security holes. These increases, in combination with limited resources, time, and expertise, have led many organizations in search of a trusted advisor to cut through all the noise. As a solutions integrator, we are constantly having discussions with organizations about what problems they are encountering. We polled our team to find out what these were, and four common problems emerged:

Data breach has been one of the more common terms in the news of late, with the rate of cybercrimes increasing steadily and rapidly throughout the past several years and little indication of it slowing any time soon. Without more progressive strategies to get a handle on the growing data volumes, diversifying operating systems and spread-out nature of users, chances are data breach will remain a major cause of economic loss for years to come in North America. 

One of the most important trends to watch in the big data market is the increasing desire of IT leaders and other executives to enable the use of the tools among other employees, which is no easy task given the complexity of the technology. For example, individuals in the human resources department might have no idea what the best practices of general data management entail, not to mention advanced analytics and business intelligence.