Infographic – Making personal data secure: a major challenge facing businesses

Data volumes growing at an incredible rate, company data being lost in increasing amounts. IT decision-makers in the public and private sectors in 18 countries have given their opinion on whether their data security strategy is fit for purpose.

DELL EMC recently revealed the results of its third Global Data Protection Index. The report uncovers a massive 569% growth in the volume of data across the world.

Personal data: major increase in value awareness

The Dell study revealed an average growth in data generated in France from 1.4 petabytes in 2016 to 11.22 petabytes in 2018. Moreover, the Index observed a major increase in awareness of the value of data. 80% of respondents in France reported being aware of how valuable their data is, but just 20% are actually monetizing it (compared to 44% in the UK, 54% in the US, and 36% worldwide). “While this increase in awareness is an overall positive trend, most companies still have trouble protecting their data properly,” the report’s authors note.

For an IT infrastructure solution provider, “data protection can no longer be bolted on as a simple insurance policy”. It should be a “primary design consideration for any workload that the organization is prioritizing,” said Arthur Lent, CTO of Dell EMC Data Protection.

Irreversible data loss on the rise

Companies find data protection an even greater challenge considering the volume of data generated and the importance of data to their operations. While incidents and disruptions are a frequent occurrence, the growing number of instances of irreversible data loss is “alarming”. 76% of companies have experienced a disruption and 27% have been unable to recover data, despite having a data protection solution in place.