Bloomberg’s enterprise information management service, Bloomberg Vault, has launched a hybrid-cloud service that enables firms to locate, manage and unlock discoverable information held in corporate files and documents.

Bloomberg Vault File Analytics helps enterprises manage ‘dark data,’ which Bloomberg defines as unstructured data that is difficult to identify, categorize, track and manage.

“You can only control and manage data that you can see,”” Harald Collet, global head of Bloomberg Vault, told Markets Media. “This product provides visibility into the dark data that poses a huge industry challenge when it is ‘in the wild’ and unmanaged.”

Bloomberg Vault File Analytics can be used as part of a “holistic information governance” strategy to search and pro-actively manage dark data, whether it resides in enterprise communications, social media conversations or files and documents, the company said in a release.

“The key issue for clients is how to actually control or analyze this type of data,” Collet said, “There’s been historically a lot of focus on communications data, but larger firms are generating an enormous data pile of dark data that’s been sitting out there largely unmanaged. Unstructured data has been traditionally hard to control as it doesn’t fit neatly into the rows and columns of a structured database.”

Collet identified several use cases for the product. One is compliance and risk, where firms need to control data for the risk that there could be personally identifiable information contained in unsecure documents and files.

“It could be inappropriate access inside the company to data that you want protected,” he said. “You may want to establish information boundaries, for example, to specify information that can be shared between the buy side and sell side counterparties. There is a separate use case for security, which, of course, involves protecting the data that’s out there for data loss prevention.”

Legal and compliance professionals can use File Analytics for policy-based record retention, regulatory investigations, eDiscovery collection, and for deletion of corporate data based on best practices policies. IT executives can use the technology for file reporting, intelligent data migration, and more cost-efficient storage management across their enterprise data and file shares.

Select clients, such as Polygon Global Partners, a global investment firm, tested Bloomberg Vault File Analytics over the past several months. Polygon’s technology chief, Neil Roberts, said in a statement: “Like most businesses in our space, we handle large volumes of unstructured data. Bloomberg Vault File Analytics is a mechanism to better extract key insight and analysis from this data while also allowing us to responsibly maintain the correct audit trail for compliance and recording keeping.”

Featured image via flickr/r2hox under Creative Commons