CSA: How to Effectively Reduce Data Storage Costs

Source URL: https://normalyze.ai/blog/8-ways-to-reduce-data-storage-costs/
Source: CSA
Title: How to Effectively Reduce Data Storage Costs

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**Summary:** The text discusses the critical issue of data hoarding within organizations, highlighting the associated risks in security and compliance. It provides practical strategies for managing data to reduce storage costs and enhance security practices, relevant for professionals in cloud computing and information security.

**Detailed Description:**
The article emphasizes the pervasive problem of data hoarding in organizations, which leads to severe consequences, including increased storage fees and elevated security risks. As businesses increasingly rely on continuous software development, microservices, and AI/ML systems, managing data has become increasingly challenging. The accumulation of unnecessary data can result in issues such as data leakage and compliance violations, raising costs significantly.

Key points include:

– **Data Hoarding Challenges:**
– Organizations tend not to store data efficiently but instead accumulate it unnecessarily, leading to high storage costs and security vulnerabilities.
– Continuous software development practices and AI workloads contribute to substantial data duplication and movement.

– **Consequences of Poor Data Management:**
– **Data Leakage and Compliance Risks:** Excessive hoarding can expose sensitive information to accidental or malicious breaches and lead to compliance violations.
– **Data Corruption:** Inaccurate or obsolete data can harm decision-making and regulatory compliance.
– **Environmental Impact:** The energy demand and carbon footprint of unnecessary data storage are important considerations for sustainable practices.

– **Strategies for Reducing Data Storage Costs:**
1. **Continuous Data Classification and Management:** Classifying data by sensitivity and usage to optimize storage and enhance compliance.
2. **Identifying and Eliminating Abandoned and Duplicate Data:** Recognizing non-resilient backups to streamline data management.
3. **Gaining Visibility into Shadow Data:** Managing data generated without oversight to mitigate compliance risks and unnecessary costs.
4. **Optimizing Storage Tiering:** Using cost-effective storage for infrequently accessed data.
5. **Optimizing Hybrid Cloud Strategy:** Balancing between cloud storage and on-premises for effective data management.
6. **Following Best Practices for Data Lake Storage:** Ensuring best practices to manage data usage in analytical environments.
7. **Determining the Value of Data:** Using tools to assess the financial value of data stores to prioritize data security.
8. **Reducing Financial Risk from Data Breaches:** Implementing policies through Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) tools to protect sensitive data and mitigate financial losses.

Overall, organizations must adopt effective data management strategies to mitigate risks, streamline operations, and reduce costs, which is vital for IT security professionals in managing compliance and infrastructure security.