Dark data are the “barnacles that could sink a business’s ship,” proclaimed speakers on the LegalTech West Coast’s panel “Recover or Delete Dark Data? Finding a Balance Between Reducing Liability and Profiting From the Information.” Maria Smith, the manager of IT business analysis and training at McDermott Will & Emery, moderated a lively and thought-provoking discussion with panelists Aaron Crews, shareholder, e-discovery counsel, Littler Mendelson; Steve Shock, CTO, Irell & Manella; and David Stanton, litigation partner, information law and electronic discovery team leader, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman.
The term “dark data,” as the panel defined it, generally means enterprise data that serves no apparent business purpose. Dark data may include, for example, legacy file shares, backup tapes, archives and former employee email stores. The defining characteristic of these data is that they are predominantly uncategorized and content visibility is very limited, if not completely obscured. (The term “dark data” may be susceptible to other meanings. For example, among computer forensic professionals, “dark data” can mean the unallocated space on a computer hard drive. This “forensics” definition was not the one used by the panel.) It is the “you don’t know what you don’t know” dark data characteristic that makes addressing the data so vexing.
