What is Dark Data?

The basic definition of dark data is data that has been collected, but is unstructured and, therefore, not currently being used. It is data that has been continuously collected and stored, but has not been organized via categorization, labels, or any other effective organization tool. Though this massive treasure trove of unstructured data could hold valuable insights if it were to be organized and, subsequently, analyzed, it is currently in the “dark”. Potentially highly influential in the decision-making processes of a business, dark data is often waiting indefinitely to be evaluated and analyzed via data analytics.