Dell Technologies Research: Cyber Attacks and Disruptive Events Are on the Rise, Affecting80% of Organizations Surveyed

Dell Technologies Global Data Protection Index 2020 Snapshot shines light on key challenges impacting data protection readiness according to 1,000 IT decision makers across15 countries in EMEA

 

Dell Technologies 

• Organizations in EMEA manage 16.40 petabytes of data on average, a staggering  975% increasesince 2016
• The estimated total cost of data loss amounted to $915,994per organization over the last 12 months, on average
• More than half of theorganizations struggle to find adequate data protection solutions for emerging technologies like 5G and edge infrastructure (61%), cloud-native applications (52%) andAI and ML platforms (51%)

 

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reveals that organizations in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) on average

 

aremanaging almost 73% more data than they were a year ago. With this surgein data comes inherent challenges.The vast majority (81%) of respondentsreported their current data protection solutions will not meet all of theirfuture business needs.

The Snapshot, a follow-on to the biennial Global Data Protection Index, surveyed 1,000 IT

decision makers across 15 countries at public and private organizations with 250+

employees about the impact these challenges and advanced technologies have on data

protection readiness. The findings also show positive progressas an increasing number of organizations – 79% in 2019, up from 70% in 2018 – see their data as valuable and are currently extracting value or plan to in the future.

“The data era is changing how organizations think about, monetize and protect data as the

speed of innovation has opened the world to new opportunities but has also increased

risks,” said Michel Nader, Sr. Director, Data Protection Solutions – MERAT at Dell Technologies, “Defining the right strategies is therefore critical to protect an organization’s

most critical assets and it’s therefore important to remember that whatever threat trends

proliferate, business leaders cannot overlook the role security and risk management play in

their overall strategy.”

 

 

 

Costly disruptions rise at alarming rates

According to the study, organizations are now managing 16.40 petabytes (PB) of data, a

73% increase since the average 9.47PB in 2018, and a 975% increase since organizations

were managing 1.53PB in 2016. The largest threatto all this data seems to be the growing

number of disruptive events, from cyber-attacks to data loss to systems downtime.The

majority of organizations (80% in 2019 compared to 77% in 2018) suffered a disruptive

event in the last 12 months. And, an additional 60% fear their organization will experience

a disruptive event in the next 12 months.

 

Even more concerning is the finding that organizations using more than one data protection

vendor areapproximatelytwo times more vulnerable to a cyber incident that prevents

access to their data (35% of those using two or more vendorsversus 20% of those using

only one vendor).But the use of multiple data protection vendors is on the rise with 78% of

organizations choosing to deploy data protection solutions from two or more providers, up

20 percentage points since 2016.

 

The cost of disruption is also increasing at an alarming rate. The average cost of downtime

surged by 93% from 2018 to 2019, resulting in an estimated total cost of $1,000,390 in

2019, up from $517,872 in 2018.The estimatedcost of data loss however decreased from

$999,338 in 2018 to $915, 994 in 2019. Thecosts of disruptionare significantly higher for

those organizations using more than one data protection vendor–nearly two times higher downtime-related costs and almost five times higher data loss costs, on average.

 

Emerging technologieschallenge data protection solutions

 

As emerging technologies continue to advance and shape the digital landscape,

organizations are learning how to use these technologies for better business outcomes. The

study reports that almost all regional organizations are making some level of investment in

newer or emerging technologies. Yet, nearly three-quarters (69%) of respondents believe

these emerging technologies create more data protection complexity while (56%) state

that emerging technologies pose a risk to data protection. More than half of those using

newer or emerging technologies are struggling to find adequate data protection solutions

for these technologies, including:

• 5G and cloud edge infrastructure(61%)
• AI and ML platforms (51%)
• Cloud-native applications (52%)
• IoT and end point (56%)
• Robotic process automation (47%)

The study also found that 81% of respondentsbelieve their organizations’ existing data protection solutions will not be able to meet all future business challenges. Respondents shared a lack of confidence in the following areas:

• Recovering data from cyber-attacks (73%)
• Recovering data from a data loss incident (69%)
• Meeting compliance with regional data governance regulations (66%)
• Meeting backup and recovery service level objectives (67%)

 

Data protection joins forces with cloud

Businesses are taking a combination of cloud approaches when deploying new business applications and protecting workloads such as containers and cloud-native and SaaS applications.The findings show that organizations prefer public cloud/SaaS (36%), hybrid cloud (39%) and private cloud (39%) as deployment environments for newerapplications such as these. Also, 86% of organizations surveyed sayit is mandatory or extremely important for data protection providers toprotect cloud-native applications.

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