This is one of the findings of the Cibecs 2010 Data Loss Survey released this week, which finds that only 32% of survey respondents showed great confidence in their current backup methodology, with 68% unconvinced of their ability to recover lost data and ensure business continuity.
Cibecs marketing manager Brandon Faber says that nearly half (46%) of companies relied on some kind of policy to ensure business critical data is backed up.
“Ironically, the failure of these policies was also listed as the main cause of data loss. It is here where the backup and recovery vacuum exists,” he says.
Most companies have server backup solutions in place but, more often than not, it is the data residing on user desktops and laptops that is the cause of concern – mainly because business critical data is not backed up to the company server.
“Gartner predicts that data flow into enterprises will grow by 650% over the next five years. Add to that the ever increasing mobility of vast amounts of data by way of much improved laptop storage, and there’s a recipe for disaster should smart data management not be in place,” says Faber.
More than 250 companies took part in the Cibecs 2010 Data Loss Survey, with 24% of responding firms employing between 500 and 10,000 people, while 13% of companies have 10 000+ people on their payroll.
As expected, most companies (41%) operated in the IT industry, while Finance, Banking, Insurance and Accounting firms contributed the second highest number of survey participants.
The report exposes the main causes of data loss and major risk factors affecting companies, as well as current trends in user data protection. It outlines the impact of data loss on four key areas: finance, security, operations and company reputation and details the high costs associated with data loss.
Faber says that when data is lost, users turn to the IT department to recover it - a futile exercise unless the backup policy was followed.
“This task is critically flawed due to bandwidth and storage infrastructure restrictions. Some of the direct costs are related to recreating lost data, time and resource allocation required to search for lost data and the impact on the company’s ability to respond quickly to market demands," he says.
“Now, more than ever, there is pressure on IT to do more with less and to effectively meet larger corporate goals,” he adds. “This is not possible if valuable IT resource is diverted to deal with the integrity of user and company data.”
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