Do You Know the Value of Your Data?

Do You Know the Value of Your Data?

Assessing and knowing the value of your company's data is very important. There is a lack of understanding of the data and its importance for the company. Do you know the value of your company's data? Do you know how to assess its value?

The word data is a term that doesn't differentiate critically important data and worthless data accumulated over time. For many companies, we can say that data is their most valuable asset. You always lock your office at the end of the day to protect the physical assets, but they can be easily replaced. Data is unique, and once gone, unless appropriate backup precautions have been taken, it can't be replaced. However, what's the point in protecting data if it has no value for your company? Furthermore, if you don't know your data's actual worth, how can you put a value on it?

Infonomics

The value of data is such an important matter that there is a whole field devoted to it, called infonomics. In many instances, insurance companies and the accounting profession do not regard data as an asset, which has become one of the principal challenges of infonomics. Company CIOs, CFOs, and CMOs know that their company data has value, but not how much – that is the domain of infonomics, also known as the economics of information.

Where IT is concerned, physical assets have a clear value, but what about the 'information' itself? Data is often seen as something less valuable and is often looked upon purely as a by-product of a company's IT department.

One of the biggest challenges facing anyone trying to value data is the lack of standards. Companies need to be able to estimate their data's lifetime, figure out its future worth, and track and report any changes in its value. Calculating those numbers would be relatively easy for a physical asset like a factory. But in the virtual world, this is much harder.

When evaluating data, we also need to understand its use and how it was gathered over time. In understanding this, it is possible to use several methods for data evaluation:

• how much it would cost to replace the data,
• how much the data contributes to your company's revenue,
• for how much money you could sell the data.

Valuing data

Depending on the nature of the data, its value also plays a critical role in cybersecurity. In the same way you wouldn't keep Monopoly money in a safe, there is little point in spending valuable financial resources in protecting your data that has little or no value. Valuing data is critical from the point of any business insurance policy.

The importance of valuing data was first revealed after the 9/11 disaster in the United States. Several major businesses located in the World Trade Center, who filed insurance claims in the months after the terrorist attack, learned, to their cost, that insurance companies refused to recognize their data as constituted 'property' and as such were excluded from any compensation payments made. To overcome this problem, the challenge has subsequently been to see the value of data included in corporate accounting, and therefore identified as an asset. In so doing, this means that any cyber insurance policy will provide adequate financial cover in the event of a catastrophic data loss.

For many a business, specific informations and data have immense value, without which that business would cease to function; other information has little value and becomes archived as part of the business process. Once data is established as having a value, that is not the end of the story, there is one additional step that needs to be taken. That is protecting your data with a proper backup and recovery solution.

Conclusion

Companies often do not consider their data as something valuable to their business; subsequently, this data is not appropriately protected. Understanding the value of your company's data and protecting it is critical for your business. Certain data is vital to your business, while other data is not so relevant and would not cause a significant problem for your business. Assessing the value of your data can help you see how valuable your data is, which data can be easily replaced, and which data needs to be protected with a proper backup and recovery solution.

Sedmi odjel is a Veeam Gold Service Provider, and Silver Reseller specialized for backup and recovery solutions based on Veeam technology.

As a company with a lot of experience in various industries, we understand the risks and threats that companies face handling their sensitive data.

With the help of various Veeam tools, we can prevent data loss and ensure the safety of your critical data.

If you have any questions about our backup and recovery solutions:

• visit our dedicated backup and recovery service page
• give us a call at +385 1 3141 562
• contact our sales department at sales@heptabit.com

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