One in four Americans say their garage is so cluttered they can’t fit their car in it. In the same way, many businesses clutter their servers. The amount of data businesses store is growing 45 percent a year, fueled almost entirely by data hoarding.

The falling costs of storage may be leading your company to incorrectly assume that you can store an infinite amount of data. Misconceptions about storage can eventually overwhelm you with data volume, drive up your costs, reduce your efficiency and risk data loss. Here are some of the dangers data hoarding represents for your business and how your can avoid them.

Wasted Space Equals Wasted Dollars

Some companies become fixated on storing every piece of data they generate, making them reluctant to delete anything, even if it no longer serves a purpose. Such data hoarding gets expensive because storage use is growing faster than the costs of storage are dropping, explains FTI Consulting. For instance, if the cost of data falls at 15 percent a year, as FTI estimates, while storage usage grows at 45 percent a year as Gartner reports, it’s easy to see that expanding storage use offsets the money saved from falling costs.

To minimize these rising costs, Gartner recommends making backup management a priority procedure. When using a data backup service such as Mozy, start by deciding what data you need to back up, asking yourself what you can afford to lose. To optimize your backup management, a best practice is to create a data lifecycle management procedure. Identify how long specific types of data need to be retained on your system and whether they should be moved into a secondary storage area or deleted after this period has expired.

Are you overwhelmed by the idea of starting a blog? Let us help you. Check out our website design and blogging packages to see how easy and affordable it can be!

Data Analysis and Data Hoarding Inefficiency

Keeping all your data is a recipe for inefficiency. Many businesses assume that it’s better to have something than not, a principle which sounds good in theory but can lead to massive accumulation of useless data when left unchecked. Data often gets segregated into multiple departments and cannot be analyzed across an entire organization. The result is that public-sector data analysts spend 47 percent of their time collecting and organizing data, but less than a third of their time actually taking actionable steps based on that data, according to Government Technology.

To use stored data more efficiently, develop a strategic plan to streamline data collection, storage and analysis. Such a procedure should separate good data that has practical value from bad data, such as information irrelevant to company objectives, data from outdated time frames and unnecessary duplication.

Data Breach Risk

Data hoarding can also increase the risk of sensitive data getting compromised in the event of a data breach. Last year, Target was forced to agree to a $39 million settlement for a breach that exposed data from 40 million customers. In addition, a total of 700 million records were compromised globally from 1,673 data breaches in 2015, according to digital security firm Germalto.

To avoid these kinds of issues, the FTC recommends that businesses take a series of preventive steps, the first of which addresses data hoarding. Don’t collect personal information you don’t need. Hold onto such information only as long as you need it, and don’t use it when it isn’t necessary. For example, many companies doing e-commerce business don’t need to process or retain customers’ credit card information onsite, but can delegate this to an off-site financial provider or to a specific secure site area.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also want to check out these others:

3 SEO Sins and Their Remedies
5 Small Business Marketing Strategies that Really Work!
What to Avoid if You Want to Succeed Through Networking
How to Use Facebook Marketing to Boost Sales
5 Reasons to Redesign Your Business Website for 2016
4 Social Media Goals That Can Supercharge Your Business
How to Target Large Clients with Little to No Money
15 Website Mistakes You Should Avoid (Part 1)
5 Tips for Successful Business Networking
Is There Still Gold in Cold Calling?

This article is published by Will Sherwood | The Sherwood Group |Website Design | Graphic Design | Marketing Communications: The Sherwood Group has over 30 years of experience working with all sorts of companies, small and large. Our clients range from entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 firms, in nearly every business sector, from across the street to around the world (and yes, even Europe, China, and South America). Our goal is to create advertising,  graphic design, website design, and marketing communication that still looks fresh and relevant 10-15 years later. Our mission is to stir your imagination and leave your competition shaken and wondering,  Now what do we do?”  We are located in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Do you need help growing your business? Click here to check out the social media marketing and website design packages from The Sherwood Group. We’ll help you capture new business and achieve your goals.

“Like” us and/or “Follow” us at these social media sites and we’ll return the favor:

LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter

Please comment. We’d like to know if you found this article informative or helpful?