Global businesses continue to house ‘dark data’ within their organizations, creating a honeypot for cybercriminals, research findings from Veritas Technologies show.
The Value of Data study, conducted by Vanson Bourne for Veritas, surveyed 1,500 IT decision makers and data managers across 15 countries.
The study reveals that on average, over half (52%) of all data within organizations remains unclassified or untagged, indicating that businesses have limited or no visibility over vast volumes of potentially business-critical data, creating a ripe target for hackers.
Classifying data enables organizations to quickly scan and tag data to ensure that sensitive or risky information is properly managed and protected, regardless of where that data lives.
This broad visibility into data helps companies comply with ever-increasing and stringent data protection regulations that require discrete retention policies be implemented and enforced across an organization’s entire data estate.
Public cloud and mobile environments represent the weakest links in data security, with the majority of data across these environments most likely to be left unclassified and potentially unprotected.
Just 5% of companies claim to have classified all of their data in the public cloud, while only 6% have classified all of the data that sits on mobile devices. Three in five (61%) companies admit they have classified less than half of their public cloud data, while over two-thirds (6 %) have classified less than half of the data that sits on mobile devices.
In Singapore, more than three in five (67%) companies admit they have classified less than half of their public cloud data, while a similar proportion (68%) have classified less than half of the data that sits on mobile devices.
“As the workforce gets increasingly digital, with the use of mobile devices and online platforms becoming commonplace, company data has become dispersed across a number of different environments,” said Sheena Chin, Veritas country director for Singapore.
“When data is fragmented across an organization and has not been properly tagged, it is more likely to go ‘dark’, affecting the company’s reputation and market share if it falls foul of international data protection regulations such as the GDPR or the PDPA locally,” Chin said. “With blurring lines between the traditional and digital spheres, it is vital that organizations take full responsibility for ensuring their data is effectively managed and protected.”
