3 Data Discovery Gaps That Catch Enterprises Off Guard
▼ Summary
– Organizations often overestimate their knowledge of their data, as discovery scans reveal unknown shadow data in abandoned cloud storage.
– Shadow data discovered in abandoned cloud storage is a common issue, particularly after mergers and acquisitions.
– The article discusses the gap between perceived data awareness and actual data visibility within organizations.
– Discovery scans frequently uncover data that organizations were unaware existed or had forgotten about.
– Avani Desai, CEO at Schellman, highlights these data discovery challenges in an interview with Help Net Security.
Most enterprises believe they have a firm grip on where their data lives and how it flows. But according to Avani Desai, CEO of Schellman, the reality is often far messier than leadership expects. In a recent interview, she highlighted three critical data discovery gaps that routinely catch organizations off guard, even those with mature compliance programs.
The first gap involves shadow data lurking in abandoned cloud storage. Desai describes scenarios where teams spin up temporary buckets for a project, then walk away without decommissioning them. Those orphaned repositories remain accessible, often with sensitive information intact, and no one on the current team knows they exist. Standard discovery scans may miss these if they aren’t configured to probe every corner of the cloud environment.
The second blind spot emerges post-merger or acquisition. When two companies integrate, their data landscapes rarely align cleanly. Desai notes that acquiring firms often assume they have a complete inventory of the target’s data, only to discover legacy databases, old employee drives, or third-party repositories that were never documented. These unseen assets can introduce compliance risks and security vulnerabilities that surface months later, during audits or incident response.
The third gap is the mismatch between perceived and actual data classification. Many organizations believe they have tagged all sensitive data correctly, but Desai points out that discovery scans frequently reveal mislabeled or unlabeled information. A file marked as “internal use only” may contain PII, or a database thought to be anonymized may still hold direct identifiers. This disconnect undermines access controls and makes it nearly impossible to enforce data governance policies with confidence.
Desai emphasizes that these gaps are not rare edge cases. They are common outcomes of fragmented data ownership, incomplete decommissioning processes, and overconfidence in existing discovery tools. The takeaway for enterprises is clear: regular, thorough data discovery must be treated as a continuous discipline, not a one-time project. Without it, the gap between what you think you know and what your data actually contains can become a serious liability.
(Source: Help Net Security)
