Organisations are failing to appreciate the growing challenges of protecting their data and, as a result, are experiencing the economic impact of data loss.
New findings from the EMC Global Data Protection Index 2016, an independent study by Vanson Bourne of enterprise backup in 18 countries around the world, revealed that, 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.
When compared to the EMC Global Data Protection Index 2014, 13% more businesses experienced data loss or disruption in the last 12 months, costing them an average of $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:
Threats to protection data
Nearly a quarter (23%) 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%) 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.
Threats to data in the cloud
More than 80% of survey respondents indicated that their organisations will run at least part of eight key business applications 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% of their IT environments based in the public cloud.
Because SaaS application providers often won’t protect against accidental loss or deletion by an employee, EMC believes it is critical for organisations to include cloud applications in their overall data protection strategies.
Evolving protection needs
More than 70% of organisations 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% 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, CEO of EMC Information Infrastructure, comments: “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. I
“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.”