How Normalyze Uncovers Abandoned Data to Reduce Risks and Save Costs
Abandoned data is like digital clutter. Whether created by users as shadow data, forgotten in migrations, or left behind from legacy systems, it quietly grows in your cloud, posing hidden risks. Research shows that 70% of data stores have been neglected for over a year, with 15% untouched for three years or more.
Even at an average conservative estimate of $15,000 in storage costs per month, it adds up. And it's not just about the cost. These data stores also increase your attack surface and create risks for your organization.
What's worse, it's just impossible for teams to find all your abandoned data stores manually. If you think you have abandoned data, you probably do. And here's how Normalyze can help.
Introducing the Normalyze DSPM platform. Normalyze is a DSPM platform purpose-built for modern hybrid enterprises. That integrates with 400 plus data sources.
Rapidly discovers and classifies your data. Uses AI to detect data exposure risks, vulnerabilities, and anomalies. And guides users to the appropriate remediation actions.
Let's take a look at how Normalyze helps uncover abandoned data stores, reduce risk, and lower storage costs. Start by heading to the Inventory tab in the Normalyze console, and click on Data Stores. Instantly, you'll see a list of all your data stores.
For each abandoned store, you'll get key details, like Resource ID, Storage Allocated, Creation Date, and Data Type. This gives you a clear, consolidated view of all your abandoned data, with the context you need to act. Let's zoom in on an example.
Here is an EBS snapshot that's flagged as abandoned, because it's no longer tied to an active EBS volume. The Compliance tag tells you which standards or controls are being violated because this backup isn't secured. We'll dive deeper into compliance in another video, so let's keep moving.
After you select an abandoned backup, Normalyze makes it easy to understand the associated access risks with the Access Details tab. Here you can see that dozens of users and services still have access to abandoned data, creating a serious risk. Normalyze also tells you which external users and services can access this data store, because that raises the risk level even more.
But did someone access this already? Normalyze's Access History tab tells you which of your users and services accessed this and when. The NA status here means that luckily, most of these users or services never accessed this backup. Once you've identified the risks, and you've analyzed the metadata to determine the best approach, Normalyze makes it easy to take action.
Whether it's resolving the issue, notifying someone via email or Slack, or opening a Jira ticket, you can do it all right here in the Normalyze UI. Now let's shift focus and talk about how Normalyze can help you reduce storage costs. Abandoned data stores typically consume terabytes of storage, driving up costs significantly for organizations.
For example, this 200-gigabyte backup can cost $120 per year. Imagine if you have 100, 500, or even 1,000 of these in your environment. With Normalyze, on day one, you can reduce your costs by $120,000 by archiving or deleting those abandoned backups.
Starting day two, because Normalyze continuously flags new abandoned backups across your environment, you'll never waste your budget on those backups ever again. Normalyze's comprehensive discovery capabilities help you find all your abandoned data on-prem and in the cloud on the very day you deploy Normalyze. Use Normalyze to find and eliminate abandoned data so you can reduce your overall attack surface.