Businesses still losing mission-critical company data

The loss of critical data continues to disrupt businesses and remain an issue for organisations, according to a new study from Arcserve. 

Arcserve is a provider of backup, recovery and immutable storage solutions for unified data resilience against ransomware and disasters.

In the research study of experiences and attitudes of IT decision makers (ITDMs), 57% of Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) respondents reported a severe loss of critical data in their organisation. Of that number, 38% had permanent data loss. 

Data is a priceless commodity, and these findings underscore the importance of building data resilience with a robust data backup and recovery plan with data integrity at the core to prevent severe business disruptions.

The research study also found that many ANZ organisations could not maintain business continuity on time once data was lost or compromised. It is vital for businesses to recover data quickly, especially in today's always-on world.

Some 86% of respondents said that 12 hours or less is an acceptable level of downtime for critical systems before there is a measurable negative business impact. Still, only 56% could recover from a severe data loss in 12 hours or less.

Thirty one percent of the businesses surveyed couldn't recover data for one day or more.

The research results also revealed that a new approach to disaster recovery is needed. Organisations should continuously update, test, and document their disaster recovery plan to build data resilience. The importance of protecting and recovering data should also be elevated to all company levels with specific goals.

According to the report, 94% of respondents in the survey said their company has a disaster recovery plan. However, only 24% have a mature plan that is well documented, tested, and updated.

And 83% said their organisations include data resilience in their strategies. Still, only 23% have a mature approach with associated goals to track progress.

"Our annual survey reinforces the business imperative for organisations to implement a data resilience strategy that incorporates mature data backup and disaster recovery plans," says David Lenz, Vice President, APAC at Arcserve. 

"We live in a world of growing ransomware attacks and frequent natural disasters. Any downtime from data loss can be destructive for a business from impacting sales to losing customer loyalty," he says. 

"Arcserve aims to help businesses avoid costly business disasters and reputational damage from data loss with our best-in-class unified data resilience solutions suite," he says. 

"Our backup and recovery solutions, and immutable storage offering, ensure a near-zero impact on businesses."

Conducted by Dimensional Research, 1,121 IT decision-makers completed the survey. All participants had a budget or technical decision-making responsibility for data management, data protection, and storage solutions at a company with 100 - 2,500 employees and at least 5 TB of data. The survey was fielded in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada.