UK businesses are wasting up to £435k annually on redundant, obsolete or trivial data.
Not only does the typical UK organisation report levels of ROT at 29% but they also have a problem with Dark Data which stands at 59%.
This means that only 12% of their data is identifiable as business critical, which is lower than the EMEA average of 14%.
The result of this is an estimated waste of corporate resources of £576bn on just storing ROT data across EMEA.
In addition to being a concern financially, the Dark Data, which is data that has not been identified, could result in breaches of regulations and compliance reporting.
Part of the problem is that businesses and employees are storing data on business network in the belief that storage is cheap.
Matthew Ellard, SVP, Veritas, EMEA, told CBR: "It’s a myth that storage is free. In the UK 35% had personal photos on corporate networks."
"There is a myth that more data means more value."
The causes of this Databerg stem from IT strategies that are based on data volumes rather than business value, an increased reliance on ‘free’ storage in the cloud and a growing disregard for corporate data policies by employees.
One of the ways to eliminate Dark Data is to implement the right tools. This can give quick insight into data and see who is accessing the data.
The research comes from Veritas which questioned 1,475 people across EMEA.
