A report by an IT company revealed on Wednesday that a huge mass of data is clogging up storage facilities at businesses across the globe.<\/p>\n
The report\u201a by Veritas Technologies\u201a says that companies in South Africa and in Europe\u201a the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) have created a \u201cDataberg\u201d\u201a a massive block of \u201cdark\u201a useless and expensive data\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore than half of the Databerg consists of Dark Data – data which is collected but remains unused\u201a\u201d the back-up and recovery solutions company said.<\/p>\n
Veritas\u2019s Databerg Report 2015 looked at how public and private sector organisations across Europe\u201a the Middle East and Africa manage their data.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe major issue the research found\u201a is that companies in South Africa have one of the third highest rate of \u2018dark\u2019 data stored in their corporate networks. According to the Databerg Report\u201a 58% of data hold by South African organisations would be unknown to IT professionals. This could contain everything from holiday snaps to pirated content\u201a creating a high risk of non-compliance\u201a\u201d Veritas said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe study also reveals the discipline of South African\u2019s employees is one of the worst in the region. One in three employees would treat their company\u2019s IT as their own and upload photos\u201a non-approved software or copies of their personal legal and identity documents on corporate networks.<\/p>\n
This only adds up to the 32% of trivial data South African organisations are currently holding.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report revealed that cloud storage and processing would increase by a third from 33% to 45% across EMEA over the next twelve months.<\/p>\n
It identified three major causes for Databerg growth.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese relate to how data volumes disproportionately affect IT strategy\u201a how vendor hype is driving the widespread adoption of currently \u2018free\u2019 storage and how employees are endangering corporate data through their own actions and becoming data hoarders.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report recommends that companies:<\/p>\n
Cellular operators selling subscribers\u2019 data for marketing: report<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n