Browse Definitions :
Definition

ROT (redundant, outdated, trivial information)

ROT (redundant, obsolete or trivial) is digital documentation that an organization continues to retain even though the information that is documented has no business or legal value. Employees create ROT by saving multiple copies of the same information, outdated information and extraneous information that does not help the organization meet its goals. ROT can be found on individual desktops, on networks servers, on SharePoint servers, on tablets, mobile devices, mainframe computers and in the cloud.

ROT is detrimental in five important ways. First, it creates excessive storage, infrastructure and maintenance costs. Second, it impairs employees’ ability to demonstrate compliance with regulatory guidelines or respond to discovery requests. Third, it impairs employees’ ability to quickly access the right information and make data-driven decisions in an agile manner. Fourth, ROT is often unmanaged and consequently, is vulnerable to data breaches. And fifth, information that is retained beyond its legal retention period poses a liability risk because it can be used against the organization in legal actions or financial audits.

The Association of Information and Image Management (AIIM) reports that on average, half of an organization’s retained information has no business value and the Compliance, Governance, and Oversight Council (CGOC) estimates that a large company with 10 petabytes of data could be spending as much as $34.5 million on data that could be deleted. To prevent ROT, it’s important for the organization’s key stakeholders – which includes C-level executives, line-of-business (LOB) managers, records management, legal, compliance and information technology (IT) professionals -- to come together and develop a rules-based unified information governance (IG) program that meets the needs of the organization in a holistic manner.

The initial first step when creating an information governance plan is to inventory existing information and determine what has business value and/or is needed for legal reasons; all other content can be considered ROT. Although a manual review of digital documentation can be a laborious process, today there are autoclassification and predictive coding software programs that can be used to discover ROT and classify it accordingly. An effective information governance plan includes provisions for how to deal with ROT in a continuous manner and forms the foundation for a company culture that actively manages information assets and discourages data hoarding.  

ROT may also be referred to as data debris.

This was last updated in September 2016

Continue Reading About ROT (redundant, outdated, trivial information)

Networking
  • Telnet

    Telnet is a network protocol used to virtually access a computer and provide a two-way, collaborative and text-based ...

  • big-endian and little-endian

    The term endianness describes the order in which computer memory stores a sequence of bytes.

  • Address Resolution Protocol (ARP)

    Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a protocol that maps dynamic IP addresses to permanent physical machine addresses in a local...

Security
  • Mitre ATT&CK framework

    The Mitre ATT&CK (pronounced miter attack) framework is a free, globally accessible knowledge base that describes the latest ...

  • timing attack

    A timing attack is a type of side-channel attack that exploits the amount of time a computer process runs to gain knowledge about...

  • privileged identity management (PIM)

    Privileged identity management (PIM) is the monitoring and protection of superuser accounts that hold expanded access to an ...

CIO
HRSoftware
  • employee resource group (ERG)

    An employee resource group is a workplace club or more formally realized affinity group organized around a shared interest or ...

  • employee training and development

    Employee training and development is a set of activities and programs designed to enhance the knowledge, skills and abilities of ...

  • employee sentiment analysis

    Employee sentiment analysis is the use of natural language processing and other AI techniques to automatically analyze employee ...

Customer Experience
  • customer profiling

    Customer profiling is the detailed and systematic process of constructing a clear portrait of a company's ideal customer by ...

  • customer insight (consumer insight)

    Customer insight, also known as consumer insight, is the understanding and interpretation of customer data, behaviors and ...

  • buyer persona

    A buyer persona is a composite representation of a specific type of customer in a market segment.

Close