INTRODUCTION
Although most organizations have long regarded their stores of data as one of their most valuable corporate assets, how this data was managed and maintained varies enormously. Originally, data was used to help achieve operational goals, run the business and help identify the future direction and success of the company. However, new government regulations and guidelines are a key driving force in how and why data is being retained, as they are now requiring organizations to retain and control information for very long periods of time. So today there is two additional objectives IT managers are trying to satisfy: to store vast quantities of data, for the lowest possible cost; and to meet the new regulatory requirements for data retention and protection.

Regulatory Requirements
Previously organizations retained data because they wanted to, today, many organizations have to retain specific data for specified periods of time. Failure to comply with these regulations could result in organizations having to pay very heavy fine. Therefore, around the world, a number of regulatory requirements, such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, DOD5015.2-STD in the US and the European Data Privacy Directive in the European Union are changing how organizations manage their data. These regulations specify what data must be retained, whether it can be changed, and for how long it must be retained, which could be for a period of 30 years or even longer.

These regulations frequently demand that electronic data is secure from unauthorized access and changes, and there is an audit trail of all changes to data and by whom. The Oracle Database 11g has already shown that it can retain huge quantities of data without impacting application performance. It also contains the features required to restrict access and prevent unauthorized changes to data. Therefore a user can be authorized to insert data, but can never change it. When data does have to be deleted, then it would be performed by a special job, which was given privileges just for that task. Oracle also provides cryptographic functions that can be used to demonstrate that a highly privileged user has not intentionally modified data and Oracle Audit vault automates the collection and analysis of audit data from multiple systems thus creating the industry’s most secure and scalable audit warehouse.

What is ILM?
Information today comes in a wide variety of types, for example it could be an email message, a photograph or an order in an Online Transaction Processing System. Therefore, once you know the type of data and how it will be used, you already have an understanding of what its evolution and final destiny is likely to be.

The challenge now before all organizations, is to understand how their data evolves, determine how it grows, monitor how its usage change over time, and decide how long it should survive. Whilst adhering to all the rules and regulations that now apply to that data.

Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) is designed to address these issues, with a combination of processes, policies, software and hardware so that the appropriate technology can be used for each phase of the lifecycle of the data.

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