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Unplanned systems downtime was the most common type of data disruption (40 percent) for healthcare organizations using two or more vendors, followed by data loss (30 percent).
Virtually all respondents faced at least one data protection challenge, and only 17 percent believed that their current data protection solutions would be able to meet future business challenges.
Around 28 percent of respondents said they were very confident that their organization could fully recover from a data disruption event in order to meet business service level objectives. One-third of respondents said they felt very confident that their organization’s current data protection infrastructure and processes are compliant with regional regulations.
In response to a destructive cyberattack, such as a ransomware attack, only one-third of respondents were very confident that their organization could reliably recover all business-critical data.
Many Industries Struggle with Data Explosion Challenges
Across industries, organizations managed 9.70 PB of data on average in 2018, representing a growth of 569 percent compared to the 1.45 PB managed in 2016.
Based on a survey of 2,200 IT decision makers across industries, Dell EMC found that 92 percent of businesses see the potential value of data, with 36 percent already monetizing it.
Of those surveyed, 76 percent experienced a data disruption event in the last 12 months, and 27 percent experienced irreparable data loss, nearly double the 14 percent in 2016.
Unplanned systems downtime was the most common type of disruption (43 percent) for those using two or more vendors, followed by ransomware attack that prevented access to data (32 percent) and data loss (29 percent).
Organizations that encountered downtime experienced 20 hours of downtime on average in the last 12 months, costing $526,845, while those that lost data, lost 2.13 terabytes on average with a price tag of nearly $1 million. Additionally, many of those that xperienced disruption also indicated it had far-reaching business impacts from customer trust to brand equity to employee productivity.
More than one-third of respondents were very confident that their data protection infrastructure is compliant with existing regulations, but only 16 percent believed their data protection solutions will meet future challenges.
Nearly half of those surveyed are struggling to find suitable data protection solutions for newer technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning.
"Emerging technologies such as AI and IoT are frequently the focus of an organization's digital transformation, but the data those technologies generate is absolutely key in their transformation journey," said Beth Phalen, president and general manager, Dell EMC Data Protection Division.
"The nearly 50 percent growth of data protection adopters and fact that the majority of business now recognize the value of data proves that we are on a positive path to protecting and harnessing the data that drives human progress," Phalen added.
Dell EMC Data Protection Division CTO Arthur Lent wrote in a blog post that the global data explosion has “created a myriad of challenges for organizations with availability and data retention.”
“From infrastructure failures and ransomware attacks to data corruption and user error, or even cloud provider issue, it’s time to realize we cannot eliminate the cause of a service level event. We can, however, mitigate the damage it causes by having an effective data protection strategy and solutions in place,” Lent observed.
