Information Assurance and Data Protection

Data protection is part of a larger strategy information assurance. Information assurance is the process by which an organization insures, protects, and verifies the integrity of vital information. Without information assurance, it is impossible to know that critical information is what it is assumed to be or where it is supposed to be. Organizations have begun to understand that the information they store as data needs to be managed for information assurance to be realized.

Traditional data protection strategies, such as backup and restore and replication, deal with data, not information. To provide better information assurance, a new type of process is necessary: Information Lifecycle Management (ILM). Without ILM, information is questionable and cannot be used without considerable risk.