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26
L
ong before information governance
became a discipline, organizations needed
to address the challenge of finding and
locating information. Saving information in the
right place is only one part of the equation. Many
information initiatives and system deployments do
not succeed or gain adequate user adoption because
there is a perception that an inability to find and locate
important information in a timely fashion is a failure –
due to technological flaws or inadequate system design.
While these aspects are important, the quick and
efficient findability of information often lies in how the
files themselves are named.
Information is created and received in various
forms across every aspect of the organization. As legal,
regulatory and client mandates increase, information
classification has become more and more important.
A failure to properly safeguard your information
can have catastrophic consequences, including fines,
sanctions, loss of clients/revenue and reputational
damage.
Unfortunately, a historical challenge in
implementing naming convention standards has
been end user acceptance. Users often rebel against
the concept of guidelines as to how to name "their"
documents. However, the documents belong to the
firm and having mutually agreed-upon naming
conventions for information enables all users to find
documents more quickly, and meet the compliance
mandates the firm must follow. The tide has shifted,
and much like other security restrictions that must
Proper Naming and
Classification of Files
B Y L E I G H I S A A C S
