How Much Data Is in the World (And How Do You Secure It)? – Hashed Out by The SSL Store

We always talk about the importance of protecting data but just how much data is there in the world? And what can you do to keep your sensitive data away from prying eyes? Lets explore the answers to both of these questions

Data is the lifeblood of your organization. Its what allows you to make informed business decisions, improve the quality of your products, provide better services to your customers, and make your organization more secure. Your most sensitive data customer information, intellectual property, and trade secrets is invaluable, and cybercriminals know it. This is why getting access to your data is often the primary objective for threat actors targeting your business.

But how much data does your business have? Moreover, how much data is in the world as a whole? And how secure is all of this wealth of information? And what steps can you take to make your organizations data more secure?

Thats a lot of big questions with a lot of variables. But as we always love to say around here

Lets hash it out.

If youre wondering how much digital data is in the world well, the answer depends on the source you look at and what factors they include in their calculations. PwC estimated that the digital universe was anticipated to reach 44 zettabytes of data by 2020. Of course, this data was originally reported back in 2018, and their report was based on an IDC data projection that dated back to 2012!

Considering were now in 2022 and the daily data creation growth rate, that number is basically old news. However, it provides some idea of context when it comes to the massive amount of data that exists within our digital universe. Now, lets consider some more recent data.

In March 2021, IDC reported that more than 64 zettabytes of data were created or replicated in 2020 alone. Their latest DataSphere forecasts a 23% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in data creation and replication between 2000-2025.

Okay, throwing these numbers around is all fine and well but what does all of this really mean in terms of how much data is in the world? If youre not a mathematician, its likely that a zettabyte means nothing to you. (Its basically gibberish to me as well!) So, before we go any further in talking about data statistics, lets quickly explore what a zettabyte actually means by giving this term a little context.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) provides a valuable table to put a zettabyte and other incomprehensible numbers into context.

For those of my fellow readers who arent particularly math- or numbers-inclined, lets simplify it a bit more: every time you move up to the next data size level, you tack on three more 0s. So, a kilobyte (1,000 bytes) becomes a megabyte (1,000,000 bytes), and a megabyte becomes a gigabyte (1,000,000,000 bytes). With this in mind, that means that 64 zettabytes (i.e., 64,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) of data were either created or replicated in 2020 alone.

Okay, all of this is great to know but what does it all really mean? Lets put it into some context.

Netflix says that it takes about 3 GB of data to watch one hour of high-definition streaming video on your device. With this in mind, it means that Netflix requires about 72 GB of data to stream high-definition video content per day. So, thats 26,280 gigabytes of data per year. Putting it another way, thats:

This means that it takes 26.28 terabytes of data to stream HD Netflix shows or movies 24/7 on your device and were still nowhere near even one zettabyte.

Say, you were to record 1 ZB of data to CDs and store each of those discs in a standard case to protect it. If Ive done my math correctly (fingers crossed), this means it would take 1,428,571,428,571 CDs, stacked in their cases, to hold 1 zettabyte of information. Now, consider that it takes approximately 30 CD cases, when laying flat, to equal one foot in height. This means your massive stack of encased discs would stand approximately 47,619,047,619 feet tall (9,018,759 miles)!

Feeling lost? Lets make this a little easier by using a well-known New York City landmark for reference. The Empire State Building, the sixth tallest building in the United States, stands 1,454 feet tall (including the spire and antenna). This means the building stands the equal height of 43,620 stacked CD cases. This means that 1 zettabyte of data saved on stacked discs would be as tall as 32,750,377 Empire State Buildings standing on top of one another!

As another example, consider that the sun is roughly 93 million miles from Earth. (or, 92,900,000 miles if youd like to be more specific). If you were to put 93 million miles in terms of stacking CDs inside their cases, that means this life-giving red giant is approximately 16,368,000,000 stacked discs away from our planet.

Now, consider that weve been calculating these numbers based on 1 ZB of data. If you calculate this for 64 ZB of data, its the equivalent of 577,200,576 miles of stacked disc cases. So, if youre stacking CD cases with discs full of data, that stack would span the distance from Earth to the sun more than six times!

Categories of data expand far beyond any list wed have time to put together. Basically, if you have data, it needs to be secure and have backups available for when something goes wrong. But what are some examples of the types of data that organizations need to keep secure? Lets take a quick gander:

Thats a lot of data. Now that we know what kinds of data you need to protect, its time to see how companies store this wealth of information.

Data storage methods range from one organization to the next. Your organizations data storage needs will likely be different from those of other organizations in part because of the types of data you need to store. Here are a few of the ways you can store data:

Some companies store all of their data onsite while others store everything in the cloud. There are some organizations that adopt hybrid cloud approaches storing some data in the cloud and other data on prem that fall somewhere in the middle and offers the best of both worlds. And, finally, there are larger enterprises that are adopting multi-cloud strategies, which means that they use two or more cloud vendors.

So, what methods do enterprises and other organizations use to store their data and support their workloads? Lets explore the following survey-based predictions data from the Spiceworks report The 2022 State of IT:

You can see the shift in how organizations are breaking up their IT budgets:

Entrusts 2021 Global Encryption Trends Study data shows that three in five (60%) of organizations transfer sensitive or confidential data to the cloud whether or not it is encrypted. Basically, this means theyre uploading plaintext data to servers that unauthorized individuals could potentially access without having some other data security mechanism such as tokenization or data masking in place to make that data unusable. Not a good idea, and certainly not an industry best practice!

Regardless of which approach your organization takes, the big takeaway here is that you need to store this data as securely as possible. This can be done in several ways, depending on the platform or data storage method in question. And no matter which method you choose, just make sure that you have multiple current backups of your data!

Asking why you need to secure your data is like asking why you breathe: its a necessity for life in this case, the life of your organization. Taking steps to encrypt your data is necessary for operating a business or organization. After all, if you dont protect your customers and organizations most sensitive assets, you likely wont remain in business very long. Or, at the very least, youll suffer major financial setbacks and reputational harm.

Cyber security and data security best practices exist for a reason use them to your advantage and keep your valuable data safe and secure. Of course, there are plenty of reasons why you need (and should want) to keep your data secure. Here are a few quick ones:

Data from Sonicwall shows that ransomware increased substantially in Q3 2021. Many modern ransomware attacks are double-edged swords: attackers not only prevent you from accessing your data, but they also may choose to steal your data so they can use it, publish it online or sell it to other bad guys. And they frequently do this regardless of whether you agree to pay the demanded ransom.

By and large, bad guys want easy targets; theyre looking for the low-hanging fruit that offers a potentially big payday for the least amount of effort. Why work harder when they can work smarter, right? While it may be a challenge to be the most secure company in your industry, you should at least be more secure than your competitors.

Spoiler alert: customers want to do business with companies and organizations that they have confidence in. Your customers are going to have a hard time trusting you if you cant be bothered to protect their sensitive data and information.

2021 research from Okta and YouGov shows that 47% of customers will completely cut ties with companies that experience data breaches or reportedly misuse data. Furthermore, their survey respondents also indicate the following:

Needless to say, having ineffective security measures can result in losses of customer relationships, sales, profits, and future business opportunities.

Ever heard of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)? How about the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS)? HIPAA? CCPA? The list of regulations goes on and on. These are all powerful data security regulations that require the secure storage and transmission of data. If youre not compliant with them, youll quickly find yourself in the hot seat and facing substantial fines. Amazon learned that the hard way when they got hit with a $887 million fine for GDPR violations.

Still struggling with coming to terms with having to invest the time, money, and other resources to securing data? Ask yourself the following rhetorical question: Why bother generating or collecting valuable information if youre just going to hand it over to your competitors, cybercriminals, or other unauthorized users without a fight?

When it comes to data security in the internet age, a central part of the conversation revolves around encryption and the framework of technologies, processes, and procedures that support it. Public key infrastructure, or PKI, is what makes secure data transmissions and communications possible on public networks.

We wont get into everything PKI entails in a technical sense here; thatll take way too much time and take us off the topic at hand. However, you can put public key infrastructure to work to help keep your data secure both while its at rest and in transit.

Heres a quick overview of some ways that you can make your IT infrastructure and data more secure:

Of course, theres another critical element to keeping data secure: you need to know where every bit of data is located and who (or what) has access to it. This entails performing regular audits and maintaining a current inventory of assets. You cant protect what you dont know you have.

Securing your data is both an industry best practice and a regulatory requirement. And from a customers perspective, keeping their data secure is a requirement if you want to keep their business. If they dont believe their data is secure with you, then research shows theyre likely to voice their dissatisfaction with their wallets by business with your competitors.

To stay compliant with industry regulations, protect your brands sterling reputation, and maintain customer relationships, its vital to view data security as a primary focus. Now that you have some idea of how much data there is in the world and why its so important, its easy to see why you must do everything possible to keep it secure.

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How Much Data Is in the World (And How Do You Secure It)? - Hashed Out by The SSL Store