Data protection is the process of safeguarding important information from corruption, compromise or loss.

The importance of data protection increases as the amount of data created and stored continues to grow at unprecedented rates. There is also little tolerance for downtime that can make it impossible to access important information. Consequently, a large part of a data protection strategy is ensuring that data can be restored quickly after any corruption or loss. Protecting data from compromise and ensuring data privacy are other key components of data protection.

Data availability ensures users have the data they need to conduct business even if the data is damaged or lost.

A key area on the data management side is data lifecycle management, which is the process of automating the movement of critical data to online and offline storage, and information lifecycle management, a comprehensive strategy for valuing, cataloging and protecting information assets from application and user errors, malware and virus attacks, machine failure, or facility outages and disruptions. More recently, data management has come to include finding ways to unlock business value from otherwise dormant copies of data for reporting, test/dev enablement, analytics and other purposes.