Can a Business house survive Data Loss

Can a Business house survive Data Loss


certainly not! 

The impact of a data loss is not realised unless until the data is lost. 
• 96% of all business workstations are not being backed up. (Contingency Planning and Strategic Research Corporation)
• 50% of all tape backups fail to restore. (Gartner)
• 25% of all PC users suffer from data loss each year (Gartner)
• 94% of companies suffering from a catastrophic data loss do not survive – 43% never reopen and 51% close within two years. (University of Texas)
• 7 out of 10 small firms that experience a major data loss go out of business within a year. (DTI/Price waterhouse Coopers)

Can you afford  Security Risks:
In a study by the US-based Ponemon Institute, about 60 percent of employees who are either sacked or resign steal company data to leverage a new job.

About 60 percent of employees who recently changed jobs reported taking confidential data from their previous employer. This included customer lists, employee records, non-financial information. The top three ways data is lost are through CDs,DVDs and USB drives.

Increasing use of IT infrastructure by Indian enterprises to enhance productivity and expand operations in a competitive environment has led to growing security risks such as loss of critical data, a study by the intelligence marketing firm IDC (India) Ltd. has revealed.

"About 80 percent of Indian enterprises have agreed that loss or theft of critical data is a serious information security risk they face after threats from viruses and hackers," the survey, commissioned by security solutions provider Symantec India, said in its latest report.

"The need to protect sensitive information like source code, intellectual property, employee and customer accounts has made enterprises realise that data loss can turn into a disaster in terms of competition, compliance and credibility," Symantec India managing director Vishal Dhupar told reporter in Bangalore.

The survey, conducted in August involving heads of IT infrastructure in verticals spanning banking and finance, manufacturing, media and entertainment, telecom, and IT and IT-enabled services, showed only 15 percent of Indian enterprises had any form of data loss prevention measures in place.

"But medium and small enterprises in diverse verticals have been lagging in adopting prevention measures due to difficulty in data classification, budgetary constraints and lack of priority or importance of protection," Dhupar averred.

Even as data loss from desktops or personal computers remains a serious threat, increasing usage of laptops and smart phones by their mobile workforce poses a greater risk to enterprises.

How to handle
  1. Have data backup in place
  2. Direct Accessed Storage/NAS/Cloud/online media/offline media
  3. Ensure implementation of data backup schedule
  4. Educate and protect well-meaning employees and third parties from accidentally leaking or losing confidential data.
  5. Have IT hardware Audit done periodically.

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