The challenge of ‘big data’ for data protection

Extract

Data protection, like almost everything else in our lives, is challenged by the advent of ‘big data’. The Economist reports in its 2012 Outlook that the quantity of global digital data expanded from 130 exabytes in 2005 to 1,227 in 2010, and is predicted to rise to 7,910 exabytes in 2015.¹

An exabyte is a quintillion bytes. If you find that hard to visualize, consider this: someone has calculated that if you loaded an exabyte of data on to DVDs in slimline jewel cases, and then loaded them into Boeing 747 aircraft, it would take 13,513 planes to transport one exabyte of data. Using DVDs to move the data collected globally in 2010 would require a fleet of more than 16 million jumbo jets.

And exabytes are rapidly becoming passé. The volume of stored information in the world is growing so fast that scientists have had to create new terms, including zettabyte and yottabyte, to describe the flood of data.