Invisible Data is Risky Data

Data breaches are increasing with ransomware attacks and the White House is urging organizations to take measures like data backup and testing response procedures. However, it may be impossible to completely prevent an attack, which is why a data-centric approach to security is critical. 

Humans make mistakes in securing data, sometimes in error or out of convenience in the moment. Employee turnover causes risky files to be inherited without management of those files. IT staff often are not in a position to make a decision about what to delete. 

These untracked gigabytes of potentially sensitive files with PII, passwords or noncompliant data create a hazard for organizations. Compounding the problem is DROT (Duplicated, Redundant, Obsolete, Trivial) files that take up expensive and unstructured space in data storage. 

Our partner, Exonar, found from their research, that every organization may hold as much as 10 GB of unstructured DROT data per employee. And on average, 42% of this data is company sensitive and should be encrypted, protected or deleted before cloud migration, with 1% of files even containing security risks like passwords in plain text with encryption keys alongside databases. 

A single, small mistake can lead to serious reputational and financial damage to an organization, and there are plenty of examples already in the news. Without knowing what you have, you can’t know what needs to be protected, deleted or remediated prior to migration. 

But there is a solution. Bring all your data into the light so you can respond responsibly.