Organizations do not trust their data protection solutions

The Dell Technologies Global Data Protection Index 2020 Snapshot surveyed 1,000 IT decision-makers across 15 countries at public and private organizations with over 250 employees about the impact these challenges and advanced technologies have on data protection readiness. The Snapshot indicates that the vast majority of the current data protection solutions will not meet their future business needs.

The growing number of disruptive events

The Snapshot also has some positive findings. For instance, an increasing number of organizations think their data as valuable and are currently extracting value or plan to in the future.

Beth Phalen, president, Dell Technologies Data Protection, said,

“Data is the lifeblood of business and the key to an organization’s digital transformation. As we enter the next data decade, resilient, reliable, and modern data protection strategies are essential in helping businesses make smarter, faster decisions and combat the effects of costly disruptions.

These findings prove that data protection needs to be central to a company’s business strategy. As the data landscape grows more complex, organizations need nimble, sustainable data protection strategies that can scale in a multi-platform, multi-cloud world.”

The number shows that disruptive events in the form of cyber-attacks that cause data loss and systems downtime have increased. Most organizations suffered a disruptive event in the last 12 months. 68% of participants fear to experience a disruptive event within the next 12 months.

Another important finding of the Snapshot is that using more than one data protection vendor makes clients approximately two times more vulnerable to a cyber incident that prevents access to their data. Data shows a ratio of 39% of those using two or more vendors versus 20% of those using only one vendor. On the other hand, we see the rise of the use of multiple data protection vendors despite what numbers tell.

A sharp rise in the cost of disruption

81% of respondents do not trust their organizations’ existing data protection solutions. Respondents shared a lack of confidence in the following areas:

• Recovering data from cyber-attacks (69%)
• Recovering data from a data loss incident (64%)
• Meeting compliance with regional data governance regulations (62%)
• Meeting backup and recovery service level objectives (62%)

Additionally, the cost of disruption is also another important issue. The average cost of downtime has an estimated total cost of $810,018 in 2019, up from $526,845 in 2018. Meanwhile, the estimated cost of data loss also augmented from $995,613 in 2018 to $1,013,075 in 2019.

When we look at the findings of the cloud type prefer of organizations, we see 43% preferred public cloud/SaaS, 42% preferred hybrid cloud while private cloud has a 39% share. At the same time, 85% of organizations think that it is mandatory or extremely important for data protection providers to protect cloud-native applications.

Organizations invest in newer or emerging technologies. According to the survey, the top five are cloud-native applications (58%); artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) (53%); software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications (51%); 5G and cloud edge infrastructure (49%); and Internet of Things/endpoint (36%).

Findings also show the security concerns about data protection. Nearly three-quarters of respondents believe these emerging technologies affect more data protection complexity. Meanwhile, 61% said that emerging technologies pose a risk to data protection.