Data security is becoming costlier for organizations worldwide and the threats of cyber attacks added pressure on organizations from customers to protect their sensitive information. As a result, several organizations have already invested in new processes to safeguard their ‘data.’
However, we should not miss anything related to a dark part of databases that is lingering beneath the surface that might come back to haunt organizations.
Along with structured data, a huge amount of unstructured data, known as dark data, also occupies the storage of every organization often as a result of a user’s daily digital interactions. This could include data of previous employees, customer information, financial transaction, confidential emails, messages and video call transcripts, and other sensitive information.
Companies store a vast amount of unstructured or semi-structured data in log files or data archives for future utilization.
The mysterious nature of dark data makes it hard to protect, and also creates a sense of insecurity what if threat actors get access to this data?
Because of the availability of online services, data is being produced at a very rapid pace; it becomes very difficult for organizations to quantify their dark data. As per a recent survey, more than half of an organization’s data is unavailable for analysis.
Nevertheless, shocking that unstructured data is rising at a rate of 55-65% per annum (1.7 MB of data is created for each of the 7.3 billion people every minute of a day).
This means by 2025 organizations will be having more than 163 trillion gigabytes of data worldwide, 80% of which will be unstructured data, and 90% of that will never be analyzed or used in regular business activities.
Now the question is what organizations could possibly do to protect the data? The first and most important step organizations should take is processing and discovering what data is sensitive and exposed. To accomplish this, security teams should be aware of where dark data resides, and who has access to it.
Furthermore, organizations should seek independent consultants from a data expert who can review a data environment and conduct in-depth reviews of unstructured data. Once an organization reviewed its dark data, it can then identify what data has business value and protect that data accordingly.
However, it can not assure companies full protection from bad actors, and a record 35% of all consumers do not trust any industry to protect their data adequately.
