Storing data costs money. Why waste money on storing data you don’t even need? Data Discovery tools are a well-placed tool in the armoury of IT and Security professionals, but they could also help you save money, by effectively just tidying up!

ROT Data is a term used to describe data which is duplicated, old or just not important. Redundant, Obsolete & Trivial, ROT.

1.   Redundant

Humans duplicate data when they work with it. Sometimes they save multiple copies, put it in two locations or replicate it by accident. Fundamentally you probably don’t need two copies of a report once it’s been published.

2.   Obsolete

Data becomes out of date or stale very quickly; most organisations do not have the need to revisit unstructured data as little as two weeks or less after it’s created. Data gets superseded so If you don’t need the data any more, then why are you keeping it?

3.   Trivial

Data which you probably didn’t want or need to store in the first place. This data does not provide knowledge or value to the organisation. Last years Christmas lunch orders for example, yep do not need that.

The thing is, with ROT data, if you binned it all off, no one’s going to bat an eyelid, but to allow that to happen we’ve got to find it…

There are so many other reasons not to keep ROT data in your enterprise, more data being held means a larger risk for one. Productivity degradation as employees sift through old data stores to find the information which is relevant. Compliance complications too if we’re duplicating or storing old PII for example.

Organisations big or small get itchy feet when it comes to deleting data. Of course, there’ll always be our friend the backup for times when something does need restoring but IT professionals generally err on the side of caution when it comes to archival or deletion of data of any description.

Employing Data Discovery, Data Governance or Data Classification tooling will enable you to get a grip on the data your storing, and amongst many other benefits highlight the ROT data which could be expunged rather than upgrading disks or paying for extra cloud storage.

HANDD’s data security experts understand how keeping tabs on data, ROTten or otherwise, is a key piece of your information management programme.

To find out more about how HANDD can help, contact the team of specialists at HANDD on 0845 643 4063.