Organizations are drowning in data and the tide is only going to get higher. That was the major takeaway from the "Meeting the Challenges of Information Governance in the Cloud" panel that helped to launch the first day of Legalweek(year) 2021. Panelists addressed some of the challenges that organizations will face in launching their own information governance programs even as the volumes of data continue to grow exponentially.

Moderator Brian Hupp, special adviser to Onna, said that workplaces are digitizing more rapidly than policies and retention plans can manage to keep up. This is driven in large part by a modern enterprise's reliance upon technology, with Hupp noting that today the average business uses over 129 different software apps—many falling under the heading of collaboration tools like Slack.

"Obviously our pandemic is accelerating digitization for all of us. What was already moving at an accelerated pace is now moving at an exponential pace and giving us massive, massive amounts of new data to govern," he said.