Data breaches and hacker activities are being published in the media almost every week. With every report, consumers become increasingly frustrated and organizations face increasing pressure to protect their data. This interesting information came to us from IT Pro Portal in their article, “Unstructured data: The hidden threat in digital business.”

If organizations are only considering the neat rows and columns of a database when examining their data, they are missing a big part of the picture. Structured data is what the majority of the general public associates with data, and in turn, data breaches. When many business leaders plan for preventing hacks and breaches, they plan with structured data in mind.

Sadly, that definition of data ignores a massive amount of data known as unstructured data. Documents, pictures and video are means of storing data about consumers, but in an unstructured way. Unstructured data represents any data that does not have a recognizable structure. It is unorganized, raw, and can be non-textual or textual. This results in irregularities and ambiguities that make it difficult to understand or protect using traditional programs.

Melody K. Smith
