Alfresco boosts information governance capabilities in platform update

Alfresco Software, an open source software company, is introducing new information governance capabilities for the Alfresco Digital Business Platform.

Alfresco is updating its Alfresco Governance Services including new Federation Services that enable ‘Manage in Place’ records management, enhanced its E-Discovery and ‘Legal Hold’ with artificial Intelligence (AI), and added Governance to Desktop Synchronization.

Alfresco Federation Services is a new addition to Alfresco’s portfolio and provides a powerful federated search and manage-in-place functionality to access, control and govern content residing in more than sixty different business and content repository types.

This also enables users to conduct a search across multiple, disparate databases from a single application and without the need for content migration.

This allows users to search, view, and manage content from Alfresco and non-Alfresco repositories(e.g. Network File Shares, OpenText, Documentum, Microsoft SharePoint, Dropbox and more) from a single search user interface (UI) and take action upon the search results – for instance, place the content on hold or export it in the Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM) XML export format for ingestion into e-discovery or review tools

Managing exponential increases in regulatory changes (e.g. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR], the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA], California’s Consumer Privacy Act [CCPA] etc.) has lead to an upsurge in compliance risk, and the accompanying rise of regulatory fees (and fines) are some of the many significant, ongoing concerns for executives across all organizations – no industry or government is immune.

With Federation Services, Alfresco Governance Services now provides a single point of access - with a modern responsive user interface - to all the information resources in an organization. With Alfresco Federation Services powering federated records management, users are able to improve information governance across all their content repositories from the same Alfresco user experience.

 Alfresco Governance Services now includes enriched search and ‘Legal Hold’ supercharged by AI. The‘Legal Hold’ process is frequently complex due to the sheer volume of structured and unstructured data that needs to be scanned and evaluated, resulting in massive scale and costly e-discovery tasks.

Alfresco uses AI to enrich the discovery of relevant content and metadata, thus helping accelerate the identification, hold, and control of legally-sensitive information.

Alfresco's AI-assisted ‘Legal Hold’ can significantly help legal and IT professionals by providing enhanced document search and management capabilities, better enabling them to quickly and comprehensively identify the facts and relevant content that matter for litigation purposes for improved, cost-effective legal outcomes.

Further, the Alfresco Digital Business Platform now includes Desktop Synchronization, which not only synchronizes content between a repository and a desktop, but also synchronizes the records management policies associated with that content. This ensures all documents – even those working documents stored on a user's desktop – retain a predefined level of governance.

Other new additions and capabilities on the Alfresco Digital Business Platform include:

• ‘Manage-in-Place’ without migration – This enables organizations to keep content stored in its current location (i.e. OpenText, Documentum, Microsoft SharePoint, Dropbox and more), but still enjoy the benefits of the Alfresco Digital Business Platform that provides a connection between the content and repository to facilitate retention, holds, dispositions and workflow;
• Automated Digital Filing – This leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning leveraging Alfresco Intelligence Services for greater security and protection. This enhanced functionality includes the automation of digital filing and detection of Personal Identifiable Information (PII) (for GDPR, CCPA, …) as well as the automation of records declaration, classification, and disposal of records using rules and processes;
• Invisible, frictionless governance – This provides the automation of records management to make it an integral part of the business process, building an invisible, automated, and compliant records management platform. This means people in the work environment do not have to think about records management as it happens automatically and to the satisfaction of records managers;
• Long Term Storage Options – The provision of storage connectors for long term storage options for digital preservation and transformation to the PDF/A format.

For more information about these updates, visit www.alfresco.com.