Mobility spurs major changes in enterprise governance strategies

These findings indicate a growing sense of urgency that corresponds to other research suggesting that 20% of CIOs will lose their jobs by 2016 for failing to successfully implement information governance. The sharp rise in governance initiatives revealed by the study implies mounting pressure to close the governance gaps created by today’s increasingly complex information environment.

Based on a survey of 205 IT and legal professionals in enterprises in the US and UK, the Forrester analysisrevealed rising recognition of the role that mobile computing is playing inweakening the existing governance infrastructure in the enterprise.

Fully 44% of survey participants believe that endpoint data remains at risk despite security and governance controls already in place. Roughly the same number cites the proliferation of file shares (45%), lack of coordinated governance (42%) and mobile devices (41%) as the top three endpoint governance challenges they face in solving the problem.

Organisations are responding with multiple initiatives aimed at strengthening governance, compliance and eDiscovery efforts to deal with the complications of increased mobility. Within two years, for example, 64% of respondents plan to increase their focus on tablet devices as governance targets, reflecting growing use of iPads and competitive products for business purposes.

In the same two years, according to the survey:

89% plan to invest more in information governance programs, with 44% expecting increases of 10% to 20%.
53% expect to centralise information governance to ensure that enterprise content on end user devices is protected and managed, up from 25% today and only 18% two years ago.
eDiscovery will have experienced the largest growth as a priority in endpoint-related governance, running second only to compliance.
84-85% expect to use technology to facilitate governance and eDiscovery on end user devices, an increase of 34% from today and 61% from two years ago.

“With the rise of the mobile workforce, organisations must establish strategies to govern not only corporate and employee-owned mobile devices, but also the multiple channels that are now required to make data available anywhere on any device. The increase in complexity is staggering,” said Chandar Venkataraman, Chief Product Officer at Druva. “As these findings indicate, technology solutions are going to become increasingly important in identifying, preserving and collecting content from end user devices for all aspects of governance, including compliance and eDiscovery.”

“Forrester’s research validates what we are seeing in the eDiscovery space. Organisations are struggling to deal with mobility in the workplace as it relates to collection and review of information on BYOD equipment for legal proceedings and compliance audits,” said Dean Gonsowski, vice president, businessdevelopment and head of global information governance at Recommind. “New approaches to information governance, including defensive deletion, are required to reduce the risk associated with data generated by mobile devices, as well as to keep costs down during the eDiscovery process.”