The landscape of dark data is rapidly evolving, with recent reports indicating a significant increase in the volume and complexity of this unutilized data. IDC states unstructured data will be 90% of all enterprise data and is growing at a much higher rate than structured at almost 55-65%. These trends suggest that as we delve deeper into the digital age, the importance of understanding and leveraging dark data will become increasingly critical for businesses seeking to maintain a secure digital landscape.

Common sources of dark data typically include information collected through everyday business activities but remains unused or underutilized. This can encompass a wide array of data types, such as system log files, geolocation data, customer interaction records and operational data from IoT devices, including readings from environmental sensors or manufacturing equipment. Additionally, dark data may also consist of older archived business records, such as financial statements, emails, and employee information which are often stored in silos, making them difficult to access and analyze. The challenge with dark data lies not only in its volume but also in the sensitive information it may hold, which is frequently a lack of effective data protection and governance strategies. In this blog, we will delve into the world of dark data assessment, exploring its definition, significance, challenges, and potential solutions.

Dark data assessment is crucial for organizations seeking to extract value from their untapped data resources. Here are a few reasons why it matters:

• Identifying opportunities: By analyzing dark data, businesses can uncover valuable insights, identify trends, and recognize untapped opportunities that can drive innovation, enhance customer experiences, and improve operational efficiency. 
• Risk management and compliance: Dark data assessment helps organizations discover potential risks and ensure compliance with industry regulations. It allows for identifying sensitive or personal information, reducing the risk of data breaches and maintaining data privacy. 
• Cost optimization: By leveraging dark data assessment, organizations can optimize costs by identifying redundant, obsolete, or unnecessary data storage, streamlining data management processes, and avoiding unnecessary expenses.

Despite its potential, dark data assessment comes with its fair share of challenges. Here are a few obstacles that organizations may encounter:

• Data variety and complexity: Dark data exists in various formats and sources, making it challenging to consolidate, analyze, and derive meaningful insights. 
• Data quality and inconsistency: Dark data often lacks structure and quality control, making it unreliable for decision-making. Organizations must invest in data cleansing and standardization processes to ensure accurate results. 
• Privacy and ethical concerns: Dark data assessment may contain sensitive and personal information. Hence, organizations must prioritize data privacy and ethical considerations while handling and analyzing such data. 
• Data visibility: Lack of data visibility results in difficulty to identify and mitigate dark data thereby increasing attack surface and lowering overall resiliency. 
• Higher costs: Dark data leads to increased storage consumption resulting in higher costs.

HCLTech addresses these challenges with its VisualizeNXT offering, which helps the organizations deal with dark data challenges. The offering allows organizations to identify dark data as well as any sensitive information contained in it. Once the identification is complete, the organizations are provided with insights to the dark data present in the data landscape. The customer also suggested various remediation strategies for the data looking at the governance and compliance policies. After deciding which data to retain or purge, remediation can begin. This process includes efficiently and securely storing data, as well as purging or archiving it.

As technology continues to evolve, the future of dark data assessment looks promising. Below are a few trends that are shaping its trajectory:

• AI/ML powered tools: AI-powered algorithms and automation tools are revolutionizing dark data assessment. These technologies can analyze vast amounts of unstructured data quickly and accurately, providing actionable insights in real time.
• Increasingly robust regulations and compliances: With increasing concerns about data privacy and regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), organizations must prioritize data privacy and adopt robust security measures when handling dark data. 
• Data democratization: Empowering employees at all levels with relevant access to dark data promotes data-driven decision-making across the organization. Data democratization encourages innovation and empowers individuals to leverage data for problem-solving.

Dark data assessment is a transformative process that enables organizations to uncover hidden insights and capitalize on untapped opportunities. By embracing advanced analytics, implementing robust data governance frameworks, and fostering collaboration, businesses can reduce dark data generation thereby increasing overall data governance.

HCLTech VisualizeNXT helps organizations optimize their data landscape by identifying and remediating dark data. The customer can reap multiple direct and indirect benefits of dark data assessment and remediation, a few significant benefits are as follows:

• Reduced storage costs – Relevant data gets archived for a limited duration, reducing hardware and maintenance costs significantly. 
• Reduced attack surface and minimized chances of data loss – Due to lesser data the overall attack surface decreases and the archived data can be restored at any time, reducing the impact on the performance of production storages. 
• Maintain data compliance – Easy retrieval and enhanced data availability ensure compliance and regulatory adherence. 
• Improved application performance – Faster production data retrievals and improved database performance due to a lesser amount of data to be processed saves CPU cycles along with a lower consumption of network bandwidth enhancing overall infrastructure performance. 
• TCO enhancement – Enhancement in TCO as a result of reduction in Data storage. Storing the information most cost-effectively and meeting business application requirements while also meeting IT budgets

As technology evolves, organizations must adapt to the changing landscape, prioritize data privacy and ethical considerations, and empower employees with access to dark data. By taking the right approach, dark data assessment can unlock the full potential of an organization's data assets, leading to improved decision-making, sustainable growth and a more secure IT landscape.

To know more, you may reach out to us at HCBU-PMG@hcltech.com.