82 percent of IT decision makers admit they are hoarders of data and digital files a study which focused on the data storage habits of IT decision makers and global office professionals found.
The research gathered included a poll of 10,022 global office professionals and IT decision makers to look into how individuals manage data.
The main concerns of data hoarding were identified, with 73 percent of all respondents indicating that data which they store could be a potential harm to their organisations.
The data included were unencrypted personal records, job applications to other companies, unencrypted company secrets and more.
The survey was conducted on behalf of data management firm Veritas and it followed the company’s Data Genomics project, which analysed a vast amount of files and their attributes from many customers’ unstructured data environments.
In addition, the research findings discovered that IT decision makers are hoarding digital files and saving 54 percent of all the data created, with 41 percent of all digital files created found to go unmodified for three or more years.
This indicates that data hoarding is commonly seen across organisations, with many office professionals admitting that they would not trust a data hoarder to turn in a project on time.
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Chris Talbott, solutions leader at Veritas Technologies said: “In today’s digital age, virtually every organisation struggles with the challenges brought on by exponential data growth. As a result, office professionals and IT departments have reacted by hoarding data for ‘potential’ use in the future.”
Following the approving of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will be implemented in May 2018, both EU-based companies and those outside doing business within are at risk of data security fines.
Talbott added: “To make matters worse, employees are downloading everything from personal music and photos, to shopping lists on the same servers, which could lead to serious brand integrity issues, hefty fines and regulatory inquiries if not properly managed by the IT department.”
