Dark
CIO OPINION
If we ’ re interested in decarbonising the data centre industry – and we should be – we should tackle this issue .
Mark Kidd , EVP and GM , Iron Mountain Data Centres and Asset Lifecycle Management
Dark data : The elephant in the data centre
With the management of dark data being a daunting issue for CIOs , Mark Kidd , EVP and GM , Iron Mountain Data Centres and Asset Lifecycle Management , asks what is dark data and why does it matter ?
‘ data ’, a term coined by Gartner , is defined as the information assets organisations collect , process and store during regular business activities , but generally fail to use for other purposes .
Like dark matter , dark data takes up huge amounts of space in data centres and is virtually invisible . This doesn ’ t mean we can ignore it . I think it ’ s worth taking a moment to think about the nature of dark data , its impact , and what we might be able to do to improve things .
Personal footprint
Dark data is easiest to grasp and deal with at a personal level . For most of us it consists of unused photos and videos . In the old days , film was precious and development expensive , but now we can take 20 shots to get the one we want , and we can edit easily , creating more backup files in the process . In 2020 , Google said it stored 4 trillion photos , with 28 billion new photos and videos uploaded each week . Google Photos is just one photo service , and those upload rates have no doubt grown in the last few years .
This personal dark data also creates a privacy issue . However , as secure as our cloud service is , there is always the possibility that ID photos , personal chat screengrabs and private files can be used by cybercriminals . The answer ? Think before you shoot , tidy up caches and archives regularly , and be particularly careful not to leave sensitive files lying around .
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