Splunk’s Frank Dimina: AI Key to Locating, Analyzing ‘Dark Data’

Splunk surveyed over 1.3K information technology managers and found that 77 percent of IT respondents in the public sector said finding and utilizing dark and grey data should be considered a top priority, FedScoop reported Thursday.

The survey showed that 76 percent of respondents claimed lack of senior-level support at their agencies was a challenge to using dark and grey data.

Dark data is a term for unknown and untapped data, while known and unused data is referred to as grey.

Frank Dimina, vice president of public sector at Splunk, told the publication that artificial intelligence plays a key role in locating and analyzing dark data.

“But AI won’t work if we’re not supplying it with massive data sets to make the technology smart,” Dimina said. “And I think when the dust settles, that’s when we’ll see some really interesting use cases and success stories.”

He also noted that cybersecurity and IT are “low-hanging fruit” when it comes to generating actionable insights from dark and grey data.

“But what they really should be using it for is to impact the mission of government — to make smarter investments at the public level, to have more openness with citizens, to deliver better services to their citizens, to improve the security of the nation,” Dimina added.