Three Reasons You Should Observe National Dapper Your Data Day July 18th

Boasting a fun and playful name, National Dapper Your Data Day is July 18th. The date serves as an annual reminder of the importance of cleaning and securing your data. 

Although the commemoration is a new event—National Dapper Your Data Day, created by Dapper Data LLC, was first observed in 2020—the day serves to maintain awareness of the need for data integrity. Whether the information at hand is personal or professional, family photos or an organization’s customer or product list or something else, data sets can become unwieldy over time if they are not regularly reviewed, cleaned and checked for accuracy. The day also serves as a reminder of how important it is to properly secure information. 

Here are three reasons you should observe National Dapper Your Data Day. 

1. Data Security is an ever-evolving challenge

Take time to review what’s new and changing in order to keep current with ever-shifting data storage and security developments—a task National Dapper Your Data Day serves to emphasize—and you’ll come across some disturbing statistics. One in three homes with computers are infected with malicious software. Cybercriminals have exposed almost one of every two American adults’ personal information. The vast majority—95 percent—of data breaches are financially motivated. Worse, the rate of cyberthreat risks are increasing. 

Thus, the national day commemorating data serves as a timely reminder how important it is to maintain currency with the latest cybersecurity standards and best practices. This is especially true as malicious actors continually adjust their strategies and techniques. 

Fortunately, resources are available to help individuals and companies maintain pace. The National Cybersecurity Investigative Joint Task Force (NCIJTF) provides materials—including a ransomware guide—to assist organizations. The US Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), meanwhile, has published a guide for families. 

Several elements regularly recur within lists presenting cybersecurity best practices. Adopting strong passwords, regularly updating operating systems, applications and network gear firmware, enabling multifactor authentication wherever supported, filtering inbound email, resisting any urge to click on unfamiliar or unexpected email and text messages, operating automated advanced threat protection antimalware and filtering network traffic are all recommended steps National Dapper Your Data Day can remind us we should be following all year. 

2. Data should be regularly tuned

Another risk to businesses (and individuals) involves data sets that are permitted to become bloated with outdated, irrelevant and even error-ridden information. In other cases, simply duplicitous or redundant data complicates storing, retrieving and reporting accurate information. 

Regularly reviewing and tuning databases, digital libraries, lists, media collections and similar data sources can improve systems performance, discourage corruption and decrease the amount of desktop, tablet, smartphone, server and cloud storage necessary to support use and operations. Eliminating duplicate or legacy (and no longer needed) video recordings alone can free GB of storage for many. 

The practice is so beneficial a variety of outlets provide resources for individuals and businesses to assist cleaning their data. HubSpot, Microsoft and Tableau are among sources providing trustworthy guidance. 

Several behaviors are consistent among such recommendations. Reconciling data, correcting structural errors, updating fields, locating and removing duplicate records and standardizing data formats are among commonly prescribed steps. 

3. Your Data is continuously at risk

There’s more to worry about when it comes to files, photos, videos, data and sensitive and proprietary information than just hackers intent on accessing, stealing and potentially corrupting your data. Users routinely accidentally delete or corrupt important records, sometimes unknowingly. When such mistakes are discovered, sometimes weeks later, new backups may have inadvertently written over older copies, meaning the important information is lost. Or, in other cases, natural disasters or a catastrophe—fires, failed pipes and electrical spikes among them—can destroy systems and equipment, subsequently causing data loss. In still another threat, hardware components don’t last forever and a failed drive or storage array can wreak data loss crises of their own. 

Because circumstances continually conspire to threaten your data, National Dapper Your Data Day also serves as an appropriate occasion to review your data protection policies and processes. Ask yourself whether your organization could recover the information it requires within necessary timeframes should a crisis—whether the result of a cyberattack, tornado, hurricane, flood, fire or component failure—occur and destroy production data. 

The US Chamber of Commerce and other authorities consistently recommend organizations adopt the 3-2-1 backup rule. The same method works well for individuals and families, too. The best practice advocates: creating one primary backup and two copies (thereby constituting the 3 in the 3-2-1 name); saving those backups to two different storage media (hence the 2); and storing at least one backup file offsite (representing the 1). 

Organizations often automate much of the 3-2-1 backup process by using specific tools and cloud backup technologies that regularly save backup sets to data servers distributed throughout the US. The cloud strategy assists protecting against a variety of failures, while also providing recovery capacities (including from alternative locations if necessary) in the event a specific site or even region experiences a disaster. 

National Dapper Your Data Day; A playful name for a serious responsibility

Special days of commemoration are notoriously fun and cheeky. How else do you end up with National Hot Dog (July 19th, incidentally), International Chihuahua Appreciation (May 14th) and National Water Balloon (August 4th) days? 

But many of such holidays serve to remind us of important elements that should not be overlooked. National Dapper Your Data Day is just such an event. Taking a few minutes now to double-check and confirm the data that’s important in your life is clean, orderly and properly safeguarded can go a long way, should things go wrong. 

Need help? Drop us a line. You can reach Louisville Geek at 502-897-7577 or by emailing [email protected]. We’ve spent more than our fair share of time assisting clients across a variety of industries and protecting and recovering data due to a bewildering array of crises. We’re happy to share our expertise.