CIO OPINION
Hidden losses Technology lag
For companies , the challenge is on a larger scale and affects the bottom line . Dark data consists of nearidentical images or documents , IoT data sets , log files and applications . This data takes up server space , and powering these servers takes up energy and equipment , which not only costs money , but can also mean significant emissions if low-carbon or renewable power is not being used . Dark data is also unstructured and unexplored , which brings with it privacy and compliance risks .
No organisation is unaffected . Estimated levels of commercial dark data vary by sector from 40 % to 90 %, so it ’ s extremely likely that the majority of your company ’ s data is dark . According to the World Economic Forum , companies generate 1.3 trillion gigabytes of dark data every day . Storing that data for a year using non-renewables generates as much
CO 2 as three million flights from London to New York . So , if we ’ re interested in decarbonising the data centre industry – and we should be – we should tackle this issue .
For many businesses the level of dark data reflects a lack of data structuring processes . The ability of an organisation to collect data can exceed the throughput at which it can analyse the data . In some cases , the organisation may not even be aware the data is being collected .
Organisations retain dark data for a multitude of reasons . Often it is stored for regulatory compliance and record keeping , but equally often the complexity of compliance , privacy and data discovery is the reason that these data lakes are allowed to build up . Some organisations believe that dark data could be
For many businesses the level of dark data reflects a lack of data structuring processes .
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