Declutter Your Digital Footprint and Save the Planet: Digital Cleanup Day is Here

Digital Cleanup Day is upon us, and it’s time to tidy up our digital footprint. Did you know that internet use contributes to 3.7% of global carbon emissions? That’s equivalent to all air traffic in the world! Additionally, digital pollution can strain the power grid and increase energy costs. So let’s declutter and do our part for the environment.

But this isn’t just about being eco-friendly. Digital clutter can negatively impact an organization’s uptime, data security, and resource utilization, hurting their ability to meet business requirements and stay competitive.

Analysts estimate that 80%-90% of all data is unstructured, including unnecessary data copies, outdated data, and expired backups. To tackle this, organizations need a vendor-neutral data management solution that can handle all types of unstructured datasets and help assess, organize, and act upon data.

By cleaning up our digital footprint, we can optimize storage usage, streamline data management, and reduce the risk of data breaches and non-compliance. Plus, it can unlock the value of important data insights, leading to improved business decision-making and innovation opportunities.

“Digital Cleanup Day is an initiative that encourages individuals and organizations to declutter and organize their digital lives. People are encouraged to clean up their digital devices, including their computers, data storage, smartphones, and tablets. This may involve deleting unnecessary files, organizing folders and emails, and/or uninstalling unused apps, unused cloud service subscriptions, and unused user accounts. The day’s goal is to promote better digital hygiene habits and help individuals and organizations become more efficient, productive, and secure in their digital lives. -Carl D’Halluin, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Datadobi

But let’s not forget about data security. Unknown or “shadow” data is a growing concern, with many companies lacking full visibility into the location, volume, and types of sensitive data in the cloud. This can lead to excess costs, digital waste, and significant risk. To reduce our carbon footprint and attack surface, organizations must prioritize complete observability of their data and utilize agile and cloud-native tools to keep up with today’s fast-paced environment.

While Digital Cleanup Day’s main mission is to help organizations reduce carbon footprint, it also serves as an important reminder for IT, data governance and data security teams to start keeping tabs on all of their sensitive data in the cloud. Often data security teams are blind to the location, volume and types of sensitive data that lies in the cloud. Not only can unknown data lead to excess costs and digital waste, it can also introduce significant risk. -Amit Shaked, CEO and co-founder, Laminar

So let’s do our part on Digital Cleanup Day and beyond. Clean up that digital clutter and help make the world a better place, one byte at a time.