Stop Hoarding Data Unless It Makes Sense: Tips for Small Businesses
When running a small business, you have many reasons to maintain the personal data of your customers, employees, and other entities with whom you interact. Selling, marketing, financials, and compliance all require having data — and, in some cases, hoarding it.
But when does your hoarding become an issue? When does it increase your risks, costs, and likelihood of suffering a cyberattack without increasing your margins and opportunities? And how can you solve these issues?
Let’s discuss.
Data hoarding is like physical hoarding
We all know a hoarder or at least someone who’s on the verge. They’ve got knick-knacks in every corner of the house, random dolls on shelves, just sitting there collecting dust. What value do they get out of simply having these things? Are they helping them live each day? Or do they create a fire and tripping hazard, unsanitary conditions, or possible legal concerns such as eviction or property damage lawsuits?
Data hoarding works the same way, though it might be harder to see as data is largely out of sight, out of mind. Pause and consider the amount of data you have collected over the years — old customer data, outdated financial records, unused servers, or duplicate data stored in too many places spanning your network. Having data for the sake of having it may not be the best idea. It’s risky, costs your business more money in storage fees, and requires more labor and effort to manage. That’s a headache you don’t need, and many people realize that — one study found that over 50% of Americans avoid deleting digital files, yet 62% feel stress or anxiety due to their digital clutter.
But guess what? This doesn’t necessarily cause them to stop data hoarding. For instance, over 90% of employees admit to adding personal files to their business storage systems. This may contribute to the fact that over half of the information stored and processed by organizations worldwide has an unknown value. At the same time, another 33% of data is considered redundant, obsolete, or trivial (ROT) — or, in other words, useless.
At this point, you may think: “Okay, I’ll delete all my data when I finish processing it for the first time! Problem solved, Slick!” Well, hold on a second. There are amazing things you can do with that data. You just have to figure out how to do them without hoarding the data like it’s an industrial-strength hair dryer you used one time twenty years ago and dragged through three moves. Just like Lonestar in Spaceballs (a 1987 classic) told the princess to “take only what you need to survive,” data must be viewed with the same rigor.
Here are three ways to address data hoarding — and one exception!
1: Secure It - Apply data security controls
The first best practice for data hoarding is about security. Personal data like customer data is extremely attractive to bad actors who shouldn’t have it. Your data is worth money to them, and if you’re careless with it, they can make an easy buck by stealing it and selling it on the dark web, which can destroy your businesses.
All of your data needs to be secured. It can be secured by using data encryption, implementing awareness training, deploying endpoint protection, installing the latest and greatest firewalls, developing incident response plans, and addressing compliance issues. That’s the defense in depth principle in action.
This practice will help you and your team be more mindful of the data you actually need versus the data that verges on hoarding. This practice is crucial in shifting focus from “keeping” to “using.” Ask yourself, “Will I ever use this again?” and “Will I use it for something that adds value to me or my customers?” Focus on retaining data that you will actively use again and serves a purpose, and let go of the rest.
At a minimum, ensuring all of the data in your control (even the stuff you might be hoarding) is secure is a good practice.
2: Optimize It - Invest in storage optimization tools
Your business data should be stored logically, efficiently, and not haphazardly. You want to organize and optimize it with tools that compress your files, identify duplicates, and move data to different tiers based on usage frequency. It’s probably impossible to do this all yourself, so any storage optimization and data management tools you use should include automation features to help you set reasonable rules and best practices.
Optimizing the data that you do need to store has significant benefits — it can help you:
Save money by lowering your cloud storage costs and reducing your hardware spend.
Increase performance by ensuring your network is fast and efficient, not bogged down by old network switches that can lead to sluggish performance.
Grow your business by ensuring that your digital infrastructure remains flexible and free of frustrating technical issues (common in cluttered, overly voluminous networks) that can prevent you from expanding or finding new opportunities.
3: Purge It - Implement a regular decluttering schedule to utilize cloud storage wisely
Most small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) run heavily in the cloud. According to Statista, 39% of SMBs spend up to $600,000 on public cloud services yearly, 30% spend $600,000 to $1.2M, and $26% spend well into the millions. The cloud is exceptionally convenient for running your business, but cloud storage isn't infinite, and subscription fees can quickly add up.
Few things are worse than spending money on things you know you don’t need. That’s why you need to review and declutter your cloud storage regularly. Set aside time to purge unused files, emails, and accounts. Delete outdated documents, unsubscribe from irrelevant emails, and deactivate inactive accounts after a set period. How about automatically deleting temporary files, backups exceeding a certain age, and emails older than a specific timeframe? This will help ensure that you’re only paying for cloud storage that brings business value.
BUT… there are always exceptions
So, after an entire article saying you should not be a data hoarder, I want to point out there are always exceptions. Here’s the critical one: legal. Are there any extenuating legal reasons to hold your data beyond when it would typically be deleted?
For instance, think about anticipated audits. When will you face an internal or external inquiry in which you must supply company data? Do you have the data to meet compliance? What about unanticipated data requests like lawsuits? If specific data is in scope for potential litigation, it should be held to comply with legal requirements.
Conclusion
As a small business, you accumulate a lot of data. This data is valuable, helping you analyze your business practices and provide enriching customer experiences. But if you keep your data without rigorous oversight, you risk creating a massive headache. So, to avoid data hoarding mishaps, remember to secure, optimize, and purge your data, but keep what you need for any exceptions that apply to your business use case.
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Cyber 101 | The Solopreneur | SMB | BoD
