ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on providing a sufficient overview to understand the importance of a rigorous data discovery process as a precursor to developing an adequately comprehensive data protection strategy. Discovered data that has real business use might be moved to centralized, protected storage and its usage profile substantially increased. Regardless of where it is moved to, we should aim to ensure all discovered data is placed under management-protection, life cycle, and functional. Data discovery is by itself a large and complex topic that exists almost entirely within the realm of information life cycle management (ILM). Indexing is an essential part of the prerequisite discovery process for building a comprehensive data protection solution. For the most part, indexing is more a function of ILM rather than information life cycle protection (ILP). However, as a function of the discovery process, data indexing within an organization does have the potential to substantially increase the accuracy of data protection activities.
