Organisations are failing to appreciate the growing challenges of protecting their data and, as a result, are experiencing the economic impact of data loss. That is according to findings from the EMC Global Data Protection Index 2016, a study by Vanson Bourne of enterprise backup in 18 countries. While businesses have been successful in reducing the impact of the four biggest traditional data loss risks, they are unprepared for new, emerging threats, which are taking their toll instead, it is claimed. When compared to the EMC Global Data Protection Index 2014, 13 per cent more businesses experienced data loss or disruption in the last 12 months, costing them an average of US$914,000.
EMC commissioned the updated research to help organizations recognize and prepare for the rapidly changing landscape of threats to enterprise data. Survey results from the EMC Global Data Protection Index 2016 identified the following three major challenges to modern data protection:
1) Threats
Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of businesses surveyed had experienced data loss or unplanned systems disruption due to an external security breach and that number increased to over one third (36 per cent) when taking internal breaches into account. Businesses are increasingly facing threats not just to their primary data, but also to their backup and protection data. Whether combating cyber extortionists demanding cash to unlock data encrypted by ransomware, or other risks posed to backup and protection data, businesses need to find solutions that put their ‘data of last resort’ beyond harm’s reach.
2) Threats to data in the Cloud
More than 80 per cent of survey respondents indicated that their organizations will run at least part of eight key business applications2 in the public cloud in the next two years; yet less than half said they protect cloud data against corruption and less than half against deletion. More than half said they already run their email solution in the public cloud. And, overall, respondents already had, on average 30 per cent of their IT environments based in the public cloud.
3) Evolving needs
More than 70 per cent of organizations surveyed are not very confident they could fully recover their systems or data in the event of data loss or unexpected systems downtime. And confidence also suffers when it comes to data center performance, with 73 per cent declaring they are not very confident their solutions will be able to keep pace with the faster performance and new capabilities of flash storage.
David Goulden, Chief Executive Officer, EMC Information Infrastructure, said: “Our customers are facing a rapidly evolving data protection landscape on a number of fronts, whether it’s to protect modern cloud computing environments or to shield against devastating cyber attacks. Our research shows that many businesses are unaware of the potential impact and are failing to plan for them, which is a threat in itself. As a leader in data protection and cloud computing, EMC continues to innovate to stay ahead of both existing and new challenges by providing modern cloud-centric data protection solutions. In addition, today we are introducing the first in a range of new Isolated Recovery Solutions, that are designed to help protect customer data against cyber attacks such as ransomware and destructive hacking.”
And Steve Duplessie, Founder and Senior Analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group, said: “Ransomware is dramatically raising the stakes when it comes to cyber security. We’re moving from theft, which is costly, to potential catastrophe. There are forces at play now that aren’t satisfied with just stealing your money, they want to destroy your entity. You can either start taking these threats seriously, or start looking for a hole to crawl into. Ignorance is no longer bliss.”
Methodology
Research carried out independently by Vanson Bourne between March and April 2016. Respondents were IT decision makers from both private and public organizations with at least 250 employees. Vanson Bourne surveyed a total of 2200 respondents from 18 countries – 200 each from US, UK, France and Germany. The rest of the countries had 100 respondents.
