Study on rampant data hoarding
Veritas Technologies, which specializes in information management, recently presented a study on data hoarders. The behavior of IT executives and office workers was examined when storing data.
Nearly half of respondents do not know the meaning or value of the data - whether it should be deleted or kept.
The survey shows that around 74 percent of German IT decision-makers and more than half of employees who engage in data hoarding consider themselves to be downright data messiahs, which means that companies that are also active in Switzerland still fare relatively well. Some foreign companies are subject to a veritable data collection frenzy.
The Veritas Datahoarder Report surveyed 10,000 IT executives and office workers from 13 countries. The bottom line: data hoarding is a global phenomenon that sometimes causes common sense to fail. 72.5 percent of global respondents admitted to also storing data that could harm themselves or their company. Some examples of this:
- Applications to other companies
- Unencrypted trade secrets
- Awkward correspondence with colleagues.
However, German companies are said to be much more cautious here. Nevertheless, at 64.5 percent, more than half admit to having stored such data. The number of unreported cases is probably higher.
Corporate culture promotes hoarding
But the development into a data messie is only partly self-inflicted. Often, this behavior is encouraged by the corporate culture. 76 percent of German IT executives consider their company as a whole to be a data messie. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of and delete data with sense and reason. 68 percent of office workers surveyed in this country have already tried to sort and delete files, but failed due to the sheer volume.
Almost half of the respondents also do not know the meaning or value of the data and do not know whether it should be deleted or kept.
When data collection becomes dangerous
One problem is the large number of private files on corporate servers. Nearly all of the data messies surveyed - 94 percent of employees and 97 percent of decision makers - store personal data such as old photos, music or funny videos on company systems. "It gets worse: Employees are offloading everything from private music and photos to vacation videos onto the same server. If the data is mismanaged or not managed at all by IT, there can be serious consequences for brand integrity, hefty fines and regulatory investigations," says Stefan Henke, Managing Director DACH Region at Veritas Technologies.
Companies should respond by May 2018 at the latest. This is when the transitional phase of the new European General Data Protection Regulation ends. Anyone who violates this regulation, unknowingly or deliberately, faces heavy penalties. The penalties can amount to up to four percent of global gross sales or 20 million euros.
Detailed information about the Data Genomics Project at Veritas can be found at this Link
