Every business works with masses of data every day, much of which is used and then filed away and forgotten. Gartner calls this forgotten data “Dark Data”, no one really knows who the owner is and whether it’s business relevant or not. Forgotten data poses a serious security risk.

Dark Data can create a positive impact if managed properly. If it’s handled incorrectly, information security risks, along with wasted IT expenditures and storage costs, should be expected. When data is allowed to proliferate unchecked the impact may not be felt right away, but very quickly ballooning costs, inefficiencies, and compliance challenges can be overwhelming.  Furthermore, dark data slows down the servers and it is a challenge to the IT operation as well.

In a recent report, Gartner estimates that 30 percent of enterprise data is redundant, and 50 percent is of “indeterminate” value. Pacific DataCom Dark Data Assessment helps you stop storing redundant data, start saving storage costs and reducing risks. 

Pacific DataCom Dark Data Assessment allows you identify data risks, storage waste, and determine appropriate data classification. The Dark Data Assessment is a minimally invasive way to scan your unstructured data, collect and collate the analytics, and have published reports which gives you an understanding of what data exists, how it is being used, who owns it, and has access to it.

Benefits

Pacific DataCom Dark Data Assessment enables you to better understand the condition of your data – and help you realize how to better manage data and reduce risk. Through the assessment, you can: 

     *  Improve Data Management – Discover stale data and identify redundant and trivial data

     *  Protect Data from Risk – Monitor data usage and discover open shares

     *  Achieve Compliance – Identify data owners and classify data for retention and retrieval

Our consultants will work with you throughout the process to make sure the assessment is proceeding as planned ensuring an efficient process is realized. The Dark Data Assessment utilizes industry-leading tool that analyzes file metadata to provide actionable intelligence to users.  It will scan a Windows File Server without using an agent and is minimally invasive to your environment. Using pre-configured virtual machines that can be added to your environment or installed on local servers. This assessment pinpoints data at-risk, classifies data for retention/retrieval and optimizes storage.