KAY’SCORNER
10 MAY2020|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE
Thedarkside
AAAVEYOUCOMEacrossthe
term‘darkdata’?Itsoundsgood,
doooesn’tit?Thesortofthingthat
wooouldturnuponTheX-Files,or
thhhatBrianCoxwouldtalkabout
meaningfullywhilesittingbya
caaamp fireinthe Serengeti.
Hooowever,beforeyougettoo
exxxcited,it’stheonlineequivalent
offfthe‘miscellaneous’fileinyour
filingcabinet–thestuffyou
create, save,thennever look at
gggain.Oldwordprocessor
dooocuments,emails,photos,all
the stuff gathering digital dust
on your hard disk drive or in
cloud storage.Amore accurateif
rather less impressive term for
dark data is dusty data.
The term ‘dark data’was
dreamed up by analyst firm
Gartner,which defines it as
“the information assets
organisations collect, process
and store during regular business
activities, but generally fail to use
forother purposes (for example,
analytics, business relationships
and direct monetising)”.
The people studying dark
data estimatethat around 84%
to 90%ofbusiness information
is dark data. Goodness only
knows the percentage on most
home computers.
Dark data is mainly used to
refertobusiness data, although
being cynical that’s probably
because the companies talking
about dark data are usually
offering some new and ground-
breaking waytomake your dark
data useful, if you just buy their
wonderful new product.
Istarted thinking about dark
data after acourseIattended
recently on GDPR, the data
protection regulation that came
intoforce last year.One of the
things the course pointed out
was that dark data is still covered
by GDPR, even if you’ve not
looked at the document’s
contents foryears. If someone
gets in touchasking forall their
data to be deleted, or to see all
the data acompany holds, that
applies to the dark data, too.
This is trickywhen dark data isn’t
catalogued or searchable.
DARK MATTER
Now,complying with GDPR
regulations isn’t likely to be a
problem formostofusunless
we’re storing data forbusiness
use,but the reality is if we apply
the term ‘dark data’tomean files
that we’ve not looked at for
years and couldn’t saywhat’s in
them, most of us probably have a
lot more dark data than actual
useful files on our disk drives or
in cloud storage.It’s all tooeasy
to use the well-known filing
method of “we’re gonna need a
bigger disk drive”when running
out of digital space,but that in
itself creates problems. Think
about the amount of time it
takes foryour antivirus software
to runascan of your hard disks,
and the time it takes to back up
your storage (you do run
antivirus software and back
up your disks, don’t you?).
Security is another potential
problem. Youmay nothave
looked at any of those old
emails, phone logs or photos,
but theyprobably all have some
identifiable data within them, and
if your computer was hacked or
stolen, the information would be
valuable forthe person doing
the hacking. If you’re running a
business, this is even more
importantasyou’d need to alert
the victims whose data you’ve
lost, and given that you don’t
know what data’s been stolen,
that would be tricky.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not
telling you to go outand delete
all your old data. If you did, sod’s
law would ensure that you
accidentally deleted Great Aunt
Emma’s memoirs just before
someone offeredyou afortune
forthefilmrights;ormorelikely
thatyoudeletedthatlovely
photoofthedogyou’dbeen
meaningtoprintout.Also,for
mostofus,theprocesswould
take forever.Chances areyou no
longer have the applications you
used to createthe documents in
the first place,oryou have no
recollection of what it was all
about anyway, so howwould you
work out what to delete?
SAFE HAVEN
What Iamsuggesting is a
two-part process. First, that you
work out what of your particular
set of files is really dark data, and
move it from storage that is
easily accessible and potentially
vulnerable to aremovable disk
drive that you put safely away.
That way, youdon’t sit grinding
your teeth waiting forthe
antivirus software to check for
problems, and the files aren’t
vulnerable to hackers or to you
absentmindedly deleting the
wrong folders.
Second, trynot to createeven
more dark data. Don’t store
every single photoofthe dog
just because you can; pick the
ones where he’s looking at the
camera, and bin the 90% where
you got ashot of the back of his
head. Don’t keep all the emails
telling you your supermarket
delivery details, or the tennis club
cleaning rota. Deletethem while
you still remember what they
were about and that you don’t
need them. Then set yourself a
reminder to copystuff off your
main machine and to longer-term
storage once every fewmonths.
I’m planning on doing both
the moving of data to longer-
term storage and being more
selective about what Isave. I’ll
get round to it,honest. Just as
soon as I’ve emptied my
foot-high in-traythat’s full of
letters about pet insurance and
offersabout new boilers and
instruction booklets from kit
that’s already broken. Dark data
isn’t just digital.
KAYEWBANK
SoftwareguruandShopperlegend
[email protected]
Analystsestimatethat up to90%ofdigitalinformationis‘dark data’–old filesthat will
neverbelookedatagain.KayEwbankattemptstoshedsome lightonthe situation
Chances areyou no longer have the apps
youused to create the documents
