‘Data hoarders’ putting organizations at risk: survey
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- Published: Tuesday, 27 September 2016 08:52
Businesses’ data security, data management and corporate compliance are being jeopardised by an internal army of data hoarders, according to a recent survey. As a result, 77 percent of IT decision makers are now more concerned about the impact of data hoarding than a year ago.
The survey, commissioned by Veritas, was conducted among 10,022 global office professionals and IT decision makers to look into how individuals manage data.
Major issues highlighted by the survey include:
The digital hoarding struggle is real
The findings highlighted that IT decision makers are hoarding their digital files and saving 54 percent of all the data they create. In addition, 41 percent of all digital files created go unmodified for three or more years.
Employees overwhelmed by the deluge of data
A significant majority of IT decision makers were overwhelmed by the extent and amount of data that they are hoarding. About three quarters of IT decision makers frequently take time away from their daily responsibilities to deal with data hoarding. In addition, 69 percent of office pros admit to abandoning efforts to organize and delete their old digital files because it’s too overwhelming.
IT decision makers admit to storing items that could be harmful to the company
The amount of data their company stores would increase the time it takes to respond to a data breach, according to 86 percent of IT decision makers. Moreover, what is being retained could itself be harmful, with 83 percent of IT decision makers and 62 percent of office professionals admitting they retained items that could be detrimental to their employer or their own career prospects. These include: unencrypted personnel records, job applications to other companies, unencrypted company secrets and embarrassing employee correspondence. Personal files make up quite a bit of the ‘junk’ saved, with 96 percent of IT decision makers admitting to saving unnecessary personal files.
Data hoarding behaviour could mean GDPR compliance failure
In May 2018, the European parliament will implement the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a set of EU-wide laws designed to harmonise data protection across the region. Both EU-based companies and those from outside doing business within the EU are affected. With a focus on protecting EU citizens and their data from misuse and lax data security, the consequences for non-compliance are potentially huge. Maximum non-compliance fines are the higher of $22.3 million USD (€20 million) or four percent of worldwide turnover.
The research was conducted by Wakefield Research on behalf of Veritas Technologies across 13 countries and more than 10,000 office professionals and IT decision makers.
