Home The risks of darkish information: Tips on how to handle it and mitigate the dangers

onDecember 28, 2021

The risks of darkish information: Tips on how to handle it and mitigate the dangers

Cyber Security

3 min read

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Darkish information is a significant problem in enterprises, and it isn’t going away quickly. Happily, there are methods to cut back darkish information and the dangers that include it.

A technique to take a look at darkish (or invisible) information is to consider the entire on- and off-premises paper information, closet- and shelf-based information, and another kind of data that hasn’t been digitized, and that workers cannot readily entry. Regardless of current organizational efforts at digitization, there’s nonetheless an abundance of this hidden information floating round.

There may be additionally a broader, easier definition of darkish information: any information that you just should not have prepared visibility of. This may embody digital data that you just may not pay attention to, resembling instantaneous messages and video name transcripts, or another content material that has not been centralized in a searchable information repository.

“Darkish information is information that’s not underneath administration, or on a company useful resource the place it may be found,” mentioned Brian Remmington, CTO at Hyland, which gives enterprise content material administration options. “As soon as found, darkish information is now not darkish information.”

SEE: Navigating information privateness (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

Throughout the COVID pandemic, many organizations have been working in extremely distributed and distant environments. This has boosted darkish information progress.

“Staff additionally use company-appointed laptops for every thing from video calls to sharing paperwork and accessing electronic mail,” Remmington mentioned. “This creates an extreme quantity of darkish information that looms in firm storage. As well as, workers could copy centralized content material to their native laptops and never add it after altering it.”

Remmington believes that the issue with the rising quantity of darkish information will all the time be managing it and ensuring it is revisited and leveraged appropriately for enterprise intelligence and governance functions. Moreover, when workers go away the enterprise, enterprises threat a lack of mental property or company reminiscence by lacking darkish information.

How severe is the danger of not managing darkish information?

First, not having your darkish information underneath administration can create authorized, safety and compliance dangers. What if your organization is in a lawsuit and should get to this information as a part of the authorized discovery course of?

Second, not accessing darkish information can lead key determination makers into making the flawed choices for the group.

Third, important waste may end up. This waste comes within the type of misplaced worker productiveness as a result of it’ll take them longer to seek for and procure the knowledge they want. Storage prices additionally improve, as a result of storing information with out utilizing it’s wasteful.

Fourth, the darkish information drawback contributes to enterprise information silos. “The primary goal must be discovering darkish information in order that it may be categorised and managed appropriately, and probably analyzed for enterprise intelligence,” Remmington mentioned. “One of many key issues to look at is how every silo of darkish information got here to be that approach, and to determine processes and tooling that may assist forestall it from taking place sooner or later.”

One proactive method that firms can use to cut back darkish information is to create information safekeeping insurance policies for workers and prepare and retrain workers on these insurance policies.

SEE: Digital information retention coverage (TechRepublic Premium)

Audits will also be performed to make sure that information (and information modifications) are synchronized between particular person work stations and central information repositories.

Each of those steps may help to get rid of the “darkish holes” in enterprise data that darkish information creates.

“It is going to be some time earlier than darkish information disappears,” Remmington acknowledged. “However within the meantime, organizations ought to do their greatest to deal with their information being created in actual time as they work by backlogs of information. In the long term, it will assist companies attain their objectives.”