Data Storage Policy

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1. Data Storage Policy

1. To classify data storage in three kinds as:

(1). Business data: documents and pictures that are owned by the organization and shared with approved people.

(2). Personal data: documents, pictures, videos and music that are private to one person.

(3). Public data: documents as web pages that are shared with the public.

2. To help people evolve from editing files stored on their local computing device to collaboratively editing documents in the cloud using many computing devices.

3. To ease the evolution from installed applications with local files to collaboratly chatting with web pages as if they were a shared document using browser applications.

4. To evolve from:

(1). Installed Applications such as Microsoft Office 365.

(2). Local Files using file explorer.

5. To evolve to:

(1). Browser Applications such as Microsoft Office 365 for the Web.

(2). Documents in the Cloud using content managment system with meta data.

2. Glossary

"OD" means OneDrive as the folder in the cloud to store your personal documents - using file explorer. "Box", "Dropbox", "Google Drive", "Evernote" and "iCloud" are similar to Microsoft OneDrive.

"ODFB" means OneDrive-for-Business as a site in the cloud to store your business documents - using file explorer and content management systemm with meta data.

"SPOL" means SharePoint Online as many sites in the cloud where ODFB is just one site - SPOL includes a Content Management System for meta data.

"Teams" means Microsoft Teams application for online chat with people in a team - just like a phone allows anybody to communicate with anybody. "Teams" was known as Skype-for-Business and has replaced "Microsoft Classroom", "Microsoft Office Live Meeting" and "Office-365-for-Education".

"Slack", "Webex", "Yammer", "Whatsapp", "Telegram", "Signal" and "Beekeeper" are very similar to Teams for asynchronised communications within a team to replace internal emails and SMS texts.

* Microsoft and many other corporations provide technical support to users via "Teams" voice, video and text facilities - Teams is a logical extension of SPOL.

3. Business Data

1. To store all business data in OneDrive-for-Business as a SharePoint Online Site - My Documents in My Site in the Microsoft cloud.

2. To share business documents and pictures with approved people according to their assigned role and rights.

3. To provide approved people with O365 online browser applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) so they may process business documents and pictures while they remain in the cloud.

4. To avoid the need to download documents to a computing device before it can be used or processed on any desktop, laptop or smart phone. To know that when a personal computer, laptop or smart phone is stolen, because no business data is stored on that device then no business data is stolen and a reportable data breach has not happened. To know that if business data had been downloaded to the device that was stolen, then the data breach incident must be reported to the Information Commissioners Office.

5. To expect that all business data remains safe from theft, malware and ransomware by never storing a business document on a local computer. To expect that installed editions of O365 shall be replaced with browser editions of O365 so the risk of downloading any business data to a local computer can be eliminated.

6. To use Office 365 to change link settings to "block download" when a person has read-only access - this may only work for Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents.

9. To know that it avoidable to take 250 hours to synchronize half a million documents with a personal computer. To create permissions to prevent business documents from being downloaded (sync) to a computer and put those business documents at risk of being stolen.

4. Personal Data

1. To store all personal data in OneDrive - in the Microsoft cloud.

2. To share private documents and pictures with named people as an when applicable.

3. To use O365 online browser applications to process personal documents and pictures while they remain in the OneDrive folder.

4. To download a specific document to a personal computer, laptop or smart phone so it can be processed using installed O365 applications. To remember to "sync" the downloaded document so it will be automatically uploaded to OneDrive as the master copy.

5. To know that when a personal computer, laptop or smart phone is replaced (because is was lost, stolen or defective) then all the personal data in OneDrive shall remain safe and usable by the new computing device. To accept that any personal data that was only stored on the replaced computing device can be lost.

5. Public Data

1. To understand that documents are a type of web page that may be published to the public or may be restricted to internal approved people.

2. To evolve an understanding of data from files to web pages where some web pages like this document may be published to the people via a web site.

3. To accept that the definition of public data includes internal documents that are available to all people in an organization without any security or privacy constraints.

4. To store public data in a special folder in OneDrive-for-business called "Communication" that has open permissions to all approved people.

5. To store public documents in a folder called "Communication_Document" because only one type of data should be stored in any folder.

6. To store public pictures in a folder called "Communication_Picture" because all pictures should be stored in their own folder.

6. Ransomware

1. To understand that ransomware and other forms of malware are a risk to data stored on a desktop, laptop or smart phone, but are not a risk to data stored in OneDrive or OneDrive-for-Business.

2. To ensure that business data is never downloaded to a desktop, laptop or smart phone so business data is never at risk from being stolen and raising a reportable data breach. To make sure that approved people understand that they should never download any business data and put that business data at risk of being stolen.

3. To accept that personal data can be kept safe in OneDrive or may be put at risk by storing it on a desktop, laptop or smart phone - people have the right to put their own data at risk of being stolen.

7. Backup and Restore

1. To understand that OneDrive and OneDrive-for-Business are not backup systems but simple storage systems - a document deleted by accident cannot be restored.

2. To define document backup as being to store a physically separate copy of each document in a physically separate data center. To define incremental document backup as periodically (daily) taking a copy of any document that has changed since the previous backup.

3. To define document restore as being able to recreate any document that is lost, deleted or corrupted.

4. To define folder restore as being able to recreate a folder and all the file contents after that folder is lost, deleted or corrupted.

5. To understand that a folder may be corrupted by changing its name to include symbols or causing its length to exceed what is reasonable. To understand that a file may become corrupted by adding symbols to its name or causing its name to be exceed what is reasonable.

6. To recall experience that has shown data may be lost by:

(1) Technical vulnerabilities - downloaded software that is not patched.

(2) Administrators who are not good enough to manage data in a safe and secure way.

(3) Innocent user who accidently deletes a file or folder.

(4) Cyber criminal who gains access as a user.

(5) Offboarding person who tidies up by deleting everything before they leave.

8. Version

1. To provide a method of document versioning so people in different locations many collaborate to edit the same document and it remains self-evident what is the latest version of a document.

2. To recommend that document names are created with a V01 suffix so the document can be edited by many different people and the version number incremented by each edit.

3. To replace email file attachments with email links to business documents so the document is never moved from the cloud and put a risk of being stolen.

9. Quality

1. To accept that some business documents are more valuable than others, but it is hard to identify what has long term value from what has become obsolete.

2. To propose that business documents and pictures from a historic sales campaign may never be referenced again, but they occupy the same storage space as active business documents.

3. To consider moving each historical sales campaign documents and pictures to a set of bespoke SharePoint Online sites.

4. To assume that where it is logical to move sales campaigns to their own SharePoint Online sites, then other department data may be stored in their own SharePoint Online sites.

5. To treat documents as web pages and to assign web page documents to their own bespoke SharePoint Online web sites - each with their own permissions.

6. To fragment business data into logical web sites where each contains up to 20 thousand business documents - searchable, sortable, filterable and manageable. To accept that this may not be a short term mission, but a long term strategic direction to separate what is valuable from what is obsolete.

Document Control:

1. Document Title: Data Storage Policy.

2. Reference: 163118.

3. Description: Data Storage Policy.

4. Keywords: Data Storage Policy.

5. Privacy: Public education service as a benefit to humanity.

6. Issued: 14 Sep 2019.

7. Edition: 1.2.