Blog Posts

ODGA BigID Data Scanning

Thursday, September 19, 2024

About the Office of Data Governance and Analytics (ODGA) 

The ODGA partners with Commonwealth agencies and public institutions to maximize the value of Commonwealth data through strategic governance, secure and appropriate data sharing, and enterprise analytics services informing actionable intelligence. The office is led by the Chief Data Officer for the Commonwealth of Virginia and is made up of a team full of talented professionals.    

What prompted this project and the collaboration of the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) with the ODGA?  

ODGA was looking for agencies to act as pilot users of the new Big ID solution. ODGA is using BigID to help agencies scan their unstructured data. This solution will allow agencies to know what data they have, where it is, and allow them to make a plan to best protect the data. DCJS volunteered to be a pilot agency for this solution.

Feedback:

The ODGA BigID solution has helped the agency ultimately identify no longer needed information, including out of date documents that required software that the agency no longer has. This has given the agency “peace of mind” as they have more control of their documents. The DCJS team’s next steps include working on a plan to handle the out-of-date findings from the BigID scan.

When asked about working with the ODGA team, the DCJS team stated that the ODGA team is “easy to work with.” As pilot users, they were able to provide feedback about the solution to the ODGA team. When needing help navigating the platform, the DCJS team states that the ODGA team was very patient and helped walk them through the platform.

Why is data scanning important?

Data Protection and Security

BigID allows agencies to identify unstructured data and documents with credit card numbers, passwords, clear text, driver’s license numbers, tax IDs, passport numbers, personally identifiable information, and other custom categories without ingesting data. After scanning, agencies will be able to know exactly where sensitive data resides in their environments. For security purposes, this is incredibly important as knowing where sensitive data resides is crucial for mitigating risks and protecting against breaches.

Helping Agencies Potentially Save Money

Another benefit of scanning unstructured data for agencies is that they can potentially save money by eliminating the need for storage as they delete unnecessary data or documents.