Data Footprints Exposed – Adam Moloney, Blancco

This is Techstrong tv. Hello and welcome to techstrong tv. I'm Bonnie Schneider.

Today we're delving into a critically important aspect of sustainability data footprints, specifically their environmental impact and how organizations manage them at the end of their lifecycle. Joining us now to unpack this complex issue is Adam Maloney, C f O of Blanco, a company leading the charge in data erasure and mobile device lifecycle solutions. Blanco has recently released a compelling report revealing how many businesses, particularly in the healthcare and financial services areas, are unintentionally walking into a sustainability trap.

Let's dive into these insights and understand what it means for the broader IT industry. Welcome, Adam, it's great to have you here. Thank you, Bonnie.

It's good to be on your show. Well, can you start by telling us a little bit about your background and your role as C F O at Blanco? Yes, thank you.

Um, yeah, as you say, I'm a Chief financial officer at Blanco. Um, I've been in the post since 2018, and, um, I've also been assigned the role of heading up all of our efforts around ESG and particularly the environmental aspects of that. And that's because Blanco's key proposition is the, is data arranger software.

So this is most commonly used when your computer equipment, which is the end of life, um, or you don't wanna use it anymore, you need to dispose of that asset, but you don't want get the data compromised. So you can either wipe the data completely from the device by using software like Blancos, or you can destroy the equipment, uh, by shredding it into quite tiny fragments so that the data can't be recovered. And unfortunately, what we find in most instances, around 80 to 90% raw compute equipment is destroyed because companies are very concerned about the this, um, the data being compromised.

So Planco solution offers a, a alternative to that practice, and as we grow, we're hoping that we can help our customers be much more sustainable. That's great. And it's, it's good timing.

Now, as many, uh, companies are certainly looking for, uh, tools to do just that. I was wondering if you can explain what the sustainability trap is as described in your recent report. Yeah, sure.

So as you say, we did a report on the, um, cost of end of life data. And what we're finding is in this report we spoke to 1800 IT decision makers. Um, and we're finding that companies are funding an increasing challenge to manage the data that they're storing.

So the data that they're storing is getting bigger and bigger on an annual basis. Um, they are collecting more data, but they're not getting rid of data at the other end. And so what's happening is, is that this data, um, storage is, is just getting bigger as we, as we go on.

That means you need more equipment to store the data on, you need more energy to power the devices that the data sits on. And so therefore companies are increasing their scopes, pre emissions through this massive increase in amount of data that companies are, are, are currently storing. So it's a, it's a problem that's just getting bigger and bigger.

Yeah, it is. And um, of course we have regulations that are coming out globally, um, that's making people more, um, and more inclined to wanna monitor, um, their, their emissions as well. So the environmental footprint of end of life data is a unique concept.

Can you explain more about how that would work for end of life data? I think some people have a general idea about it, but I'd like to take a deeper dive into it. Yeah, so what we are finding with a lot of data privacy regulation that came through over recent years and was really kicked off by the, in the eu by the, um, GDPR regulation is that you really shouldn't store data for any longer than you need it.

Um, so you know, good example was always if somebody sends in a CV because they are interested in a vacancy that you've got, you can store that va that cv whilst you're looking for someone's to fill a role. But once you fill the role, you should really be getting rid of that cv. But what we find in practices is that companies don't get rid of the data that they don't need anymore, and they just store it indefinitely.

And so that just creates this, um, increasing carbon footprint issue that, that we see across all of the companies. So I think it's, it's a mixture of both the data privacy issue as well as a sustainability issue that, that companies are falling into the trap of not really knowing how to manage. That makes sense.

Um, how does environmental sustainability significantly influence how businesses process the end of life data? Yes. What we, we've seen from the survey that we did was that the, the vast majority of companies have a plan in place to, uh, uh, to manage the data that they're storing, but actually not that many have actually implemented that plan fully so that the, the data is being minimized.

Um, so I think companies are finding the challenge is how you identify and separate the data that you don't need from the data that you do. And so because that data isn't really being tagged on its way into an organization, companies can't really find it and identify it when they wanna get rid of it. And so this gives companies a real challenge into, into how they're gonna manage all of this.

Well, despite the influence of sustainability and, um, people wanting to reduce their emissions, there seems to be a gap in implementing footprint reduction plans. So why do you think that this is to be the case? And and do you think that that's changing for a lot of companies?

Yeah, I think, I think it is changing, as you mentioned earlier, there is a lot of regulation that's coming in. I think the primary concern at the moment for companies looking to regulation is to gather the data that will need to be disclosed on, on a regular basis. Um, the regulators are really looking to make sure there's consistency around disclosures that are, I that's challenge, um, a and they're not really thinking as much about how they reduce their footprint.

They're just trying to work out how they gather the data. The other challenge we have is that, uh, buyers and the people that that manage the data and manage da, uh, data centers primarily concerned around data privacy and sustainability tends to be lower on their agenda. So I think the pressures on changing those attitudes are really gonna come from other parts of the business where probably board driven decisions to, on organizations to present themselves in a more sustainable way and make changes probably gonna come from other parts and the IT departments.

And I think that will force change through Organizations. Well, uh, speaking about these regulations, um, I am, I know, um, things are different in the US versus, um, the eu. Can you talk a little bit more about the regulations that are coming down the pike, particularly affecting the IT aspect, our audience of Techstrong TV is filled with IT practitioners from all around the world.

So I was wondering if you could talk more about that and, and also how organizations can avoid potential compliance pitfalls. Yeah, there's, there's a range of regulation. It's, it's very similar to what happened with data privacy a few years ago.

Um, and it's been driven from the eu. Um, so there's a Green Deal package of incentives that come in through from the eu, which are really designed to get consistency around the data that companies are presenting, and also to really get around companies who greenwash themselves and will talk a lot about perhaps a plan to hit net zero by certain, they would not really yet have any plan for how to get there. So these, these disclosures are gonna need to be assured by third parties perhaps as part of your year end accounts.

And what we're seeing is this now starting to spread out to other parts of the world. So in the US for example, the S SEC have come out and said we are gonna want some disclosures from public listed companies in the us uh, outside the EU and us there's the International Sustainability Standards Board that will also want companies to make disclosures. And across the board they're saying, you're gonna need to disclose what your scope one, your Scope two and your Scope three emissions are now scope one and two of those directly, um, coming from your organization.

But Scope three is about the, um, emissions that come from the goods and services that you buy into your organization. So from an IT perspective, companies gonna really need to think about what it is that they buy into the company, how much compute equipment they they buy, how much cloud, um, instances that they currently consume, how they power all the, um, equipment they have to really reduce those Scope three emissions as much as they can. So I think it's gonna be a real change and a lot of pressure on IT organizations to, to reduce footprint over the next couple of years.

And it's gonna come from the need to disclose to all stakeholders, this is what our carbon footprint looked like this year. And is it better or worse than it was last year? Do you think that there, there's, um, a lot of people that are unfamiliar with Scope three in general, that they're, that's something that's overlooked?

Yeah, I think, um, you know, from a, from a Blanco perspective, we became carbon neutral in 2021 and I think kinda dismissed Scope three a little bit thinking it wouldn't be that significant an impact for us, especially turned 70% of our footprint came from Scope three. I think a lot of organizations that are perhaps outside the manufacturing industries, but those are perhaps a bit more, um, IT based are all gonna see a very significant proportion of their footprint coming from Scope three emissions. And that means you'll need to look very hard at the suppliers that you use to make sure they're using the most sustainable ones if you wanna reduce your Scope three emissions.

And I think it's only once you go through the process of trying to measure what those emissions are that you really become aware of, of, of the impact that they have. And I think it, uh, there'll be a lot more focus on that than there will be on Scope one and two. Well, you focused in, in the report about, um, healthcare and finance.

Um, I know that our audience, uh, people that work in it might be working for these sectors. Um, at first I was just wondering why did you focus on these sectors and, and what you found in your report of, of what they need to do to avoid falling into that sustainability trap? Yeah, for us it was really focusing on those industries which are very highly regulated, where, where, you know, perhaps the most sensitive, um, personal data might be stored on the individual.

So for healthcare, obviously having people's health records or in financial where you might have details of their, uh, their account numbers or how much money they're holding their accounts. And so those are the most heavily regulated companies. Um, and so we felt that they were particularly interesting because they are the ones that have got the biggest challenge around how they manage their data, which data they need to keep, and which data, data they need to get rid of.

Um, so that's where we thought a lot of the focus of the report should be. And I think it was, it was correct to do that. You know, we, we see a very large proportion of companies are beginning to work on, on the carbon footprint side of things and sustainability, sustainability impacts of their operations.

But actually I think a lot of them are still in the very early stages of that and, and have yet to present the full output from the data collection that they're doing. Well, for our last question, if you could, uh, share with us what you envision for the future of end of life data management and also share what you're working on now at Blanca. Yeah.

Well, I think, um, where we think this will have to end up is, is a much tighter data life cycle, uh, management process. So the challenge, as I said earlier at the moment is that when information comes into your organization, it's not being classified. And so you have no idea where it is or what it is when it comes out the other end.

So in my example earlier where I talked about a cv, if you, if you tagged a CV as a CV when it came in with an automatic rule to erase itself after six months, then that would manage the whole issue. So I think there'll be more automated processes in place to manage the data life cycle. Um, and Blanco's role in that is very much at the end.

So once you've identified that data and you need to erase it and reduce the amount of storage that you're, that you're using, um, Blanco's solution will be, will be there at the end of that process to, to help erase that data and reduce your footprint. That makes sense. Um, it was really a fascinating conversation, Adam Maloney, C f o of Blanco, we really appreciate your time and joining us on Techstrong tv.

Thank you, Bonnie. All right, well stay with us. We're going to have a lot more on sustainability and technology coming up.