Sharp increase in the amount of data in the ‘digital universe’

By Isabelle Chaize

The International Data Corporation (IDC) have conducted research, sponsored by EMC, which found that the total amount of digital data was growing at an incredibly quick rate, which will impact businesses and consumers in a big way.

With a growth rate of nearly 60%, the current figure, already a whopping 281 exabytes, is set to increase still further. IDC believes that by 2011 we will see a tenfold increase in the levels of data of 2006.

An exabyte is a billion gigabytes, and Dave Gingell, vice president of EMC, tried to explain the magnitude of the number - ‘To give you an idea of what an exabyte might be, if you consider a digital bit is binary - zeros and ones - and is a grain of sand, an exabyte might be the size of the eastern seaboard coast of the US’ he said.

He went on to say that the report is a big hint to businesses that they need to get their act together regarding their responsibilities in terms of how they ingest information into their organisations and how they manage it.

According to the report, although around 70% of all data is created by individual users, it is up to businesses to control the security, compliance and privacy of about 85% of data in the cyber universe.

Gingell said that in order to deal with this massive responsibilty, companies ‘need to ensure that everybody in the business understands their responsibilities. It isn’t just the IT departments that have to manage information. The information needs to be protected and secure.’

To help them with the ever more difficult task of keeping informaton secure in the growing digital universe, businesses should create and expand on policies to do with managing information, for example data security, information retention and data transfer.

‘These policies can reflect and be complicit to industry regulations, good government practice, related to a legal framework,’ said Gingell. ‘But the message also is to take a look at the tools that are out there to help you manage this explosion of information and also maintaining the security aspect of the information that you hold.’

The study also looked at the interaction between individuals and the digital environment, focussing on the digital footprints and shadows of users, noting that for the first time the shadow was larger than the footprint.

John Gantz, chief executive and senior vice president of IDC, said ‘We discovered that only about half of your digital footprint is related to your individual actions - taking pictures, sending emails, or making digital phone calls.’

He continued, ‘The other half is what we call the digital shadow: information about you, names in financial records, names on mailing lists, web surfing histories or images taken of you by security cameras or urban centres. For the first time your digital shadow is larger than the digital information you create about yourself.’