60% of Companies Don't Feel Their Data Being Secure

Cibecs and IDG Connect have released the 2012 Data Loss Survey, outlining the shifts taking place in business data protection, and how IT consumerization is affecting data management.

One of the defining results in this year's survey was the increase in mobile workers from last year's 50% of professionals using laptops as their primary device up to 60% in 2012. Tablets however are as expected more of a consumption tool, with only 2% of those surveyed using tablets as their primary work device.

The increasing number of mobile workers means more mobile data, resulting in IT needing to look for endpoint-focused data protection, automating laptop backups and reducing the overhead costs expectant when backing up mobile workers.

BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is becoming increasingly prevalent in modern enterprise environments, 40% of this year's respondents allow BYOD in their organization, however only a small percentage (3%) of IT executives see this as their biggest data protection hurdle. Instead, the increasing number of mobile workers and user non-compliance to business backup policies are seen as two of the biggest data protection challenges.

It seems that companies are still failing to see the importance of an effective and automated data backup solution, with 37% of the over 200 companies having no protection against unauthorized access to their data if lost and only 69% of those surveyed being able to recover lost files.

There is also a concerning number of businesses employing antiquated data protection strategies where they rely on users to backup their own data. Of the companies who employ a company policy instructing user's to backup to either a central server or external hard-drive, 94% have reported that users don't follow policy. This then leaves these organization's at massive risk, and further, results in Corporate Governance non-compliance and can mean costly data loss disasters.

Just over 10% of companies surveyed have reported using a cloud backup solution. Most of these businesses have fewer than 100 users. 37% have employed a secure and automated backup solution, which is the most reliable data protection solution.

The perceived value of business data this year was interesting, with 35% of professionals placing the value of their business data at over $10,000 and less than 17% believing their data is worth less than $2,000. Clearly, although organizations are falling short of data protection best practice, individuals understand the value of their data.