How Dark is your Unstructured Data?

It comes as no surprise to most organisations that the explosion of unstructured data is showing no sign of slowing down. Analysts are now predicting that the growth of data is 40 percent to 60 percent, but for unstructured data in the enterprise, the growth rate can be up to 80 percent.

Despite best efforts and significant investments, organisations lack visibility into ownership and usage of unstructured or ‘Dark Data’. Dark data is the term coined to explain the information that an organisation collects during regular business activities but fails to use for other purposes, storing it typically incurs more expense than value. As a result, organisations are struggling to gain control of runaway costs while security and compliance risks are increasing.

There are many problems with Dark Data, and the issues that only increase with the time its left unaddressed. One of the key problems is storage, whilst the mass continues to grow it takes up storage that could be used for valuable business assets.

Another key issue is security. Many organisations are completely unaware of what is stored in their dark data, alongside seemingly useless documents often sensitive proprietary information is hiding.

If you’d like to read more about Dark Data, you can read the full Databerg report here.

Q Associates have helped many customers face and address their issues with Dark Data whilst saving them time and money. The Q Associates Dark Data Assessment utilises industry-leading Veritas Data Insight, a tool that analyses file metadata to provide actionable intelligence to users.

With the Q Associates Dark Data Assessment our experts will assess your environment, classify your data and evaluate the magnitude of the problem. In addition to Dark Data the report gives an overview of which data is used/accessed, data that shouldn’t be there in the first place (movies, music, backups, etc.), orphaned data and possible identified security risks.

How much data do you have? Do you know where and what it is? Do you know, who can and who actually access that data? Analyse your data and discover how much of it is Dark Data!