Data Protection Snapshot by the Numbers

October 1

Dell surveyed 1000 IT decision makers in public and private organizations across 15 countries for its Global Data Protection Index 2020 Snapshot. Dependence on data remains a key facet of business life. One of the key general findings was that the amount of data being managed by organizations continues to shoot up. The problem going forward is as data increases so do the associated challenges: managing and protecting it.

Adding to the challenges facing organizations like the global pandemic is a general trend of increasing downtime and disruption. Managing and organizing the increasing amounts of data becomes secondary if stable access and availability to it isn’t maintained and that is a major concern impacting confidence, the survey finds. This survey looked for insights into how investment in data systems and protection was coming along in the face of those things.

This latest release of the Data Protection Index looks at how investment in data systems and protection is coming along in the face of these things and identifies key trends and attitudes. We’ve picked out some numbers to highlight for you:

40% increase in organization data

Study found organizations are dealing with an increase of data from an average 9.70 petabytes (PB) in 2018 to 13.53 PB.

82% have suffered from a disruptive event in the last 12 months

“Disruptive events” - unforeseen systems downtime, cyberattacks and data loss incidents - are the main threats to data and part of a growing trend up from 76% in 2018. Organizations falling victim to data loss are up to 35% from 25% in 2018.

61% think that emerging technologies pose a risk to data-protection

As the digital landscape evolves, introducing new technologies is of ongoing interest in all organizations. New and emerging tech like artificial intelligence, cloud applications, machine learning, software-as-a-service applications, 5G and cloud edge infrastructure, robotic process automation, and Internet of Things endpoints are all being invested in. But this is just adding to concern about data safety.

64% are not confident in being able to recovery from a data loss incident

With expanding technology use, many organizations have diversified their provider-base by utilizing multiple options for IT and data solutions. Protecting data and responding to incidents is believed to be a risk. Areas where survey respondents expressed a lack of confidence in existing solutions to meet business challenges included data loss, cyberattacks, meeting data governance compliance regulations and maintaining backup and recovery objectives.

80% see their data as valuable and Mission-Critical

More and more data is being stored, in public and private clouds and servers, and that means it to be protected and accessible in order to keep business moving. Evidence of this realization is up from 74% in 2018.

“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 Dell survey captures the notion that data is mission-critical in both its usage and its recovery when things go wrong and make it central to the strategy of any modern business. A statement from Beth Phalen, president, Dell Technologies Data Protection, sums up the interesting findings: “As the data landscape grows more complex, organizations need nimble, sustainable data protection strategies that can scale in a multi-platform, multi-cloud world.”