Shine a light on dark & unstructured data

What is ‘dark’ data and why is lack of metadata an issue?

Dark data is data which is not ‘seen’ by the business: not ‘seen’ because it is not ‘known’ about and therefore, not used. Dark data typically includes a significant amount of unstructured data, such as: graphics, photos, scans, free text in e-mails & social media, audio-visual files & biometric information. Dark data can be as much as 97% of an organisation’s digital assets. Organisations face diminishing returns: paying for data they don’t understand, use, need or have consent for whilst losing out on potential value from bringing that data actively back into the digital domain, through its business context, supplied by metadata.

All data should be structured by metadata, otherwise it cannot be ‘known’, ‘found’ or ‘used’. If not, your digital estate will be adversely impacted in terms of:

  • volume: unstructured data is often bulky with consequent infrastructure, storage and workflow issues;
  • format: unstructured data sources are highly diverse and diversifying;
  • standards: unstructured data formats, until fairly recently, were not standardised;
  • classification: metadata input is not automated, so any input is due to dedicated operational staff and when they leave, organisational knowledge is lost;
  • performance: poor metadata impacts search & analytics functions, performance and storage costs;
  • workflow: unstructured data requires more workflow capability than structured data which has implications for networking, architecture and what you can put in the cloud;
  • security: unstructured data can be more vulnerable than structured data to hacking or unauthorised access;
  • archiving: rarely is unstructured data culled or optimised.

At the very least, isn’t it worthwhile streamlining & sanitising your digital estate – for both financial and operational efficiencies?

Take our metadata sitrep which will help you decide whether you want to continue carrying the overhead or whether you want those assets to be an integral part of your knowledge domain, embedding their value in your organisation.