57% of Indian companies faced sudden downtime in 2020

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Mumbai: 70% of Indian companies now run as many as 10 solutions simultaneously for their data protection and cybersecurity needs. And the rest 30% of Indian companies run more than 10 solutions.

But still, 57% of Indian companies suffered unexpected downtime last year due to data loss, revealed Acronis’ second annual Cyber Protection Week survey findings.

The survey aimed to shed light on the disconnect between the need for organisations to keep their data protected and their ineffective investments

In 2020, companies and businesses invested and purchased new systems to enable and secure remote workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the Acronis commissioned annual survey findings suggest that those investments are not actually paying off to meet the needs of organisations.

With 70% of Indian companies running 10 solutions together for data protection and cybersecurity needs and the remaining 30% having more than 10 solutions. The survey findings revealed that 57% of all those Indian companies have suffered unexpected downtime in 2020 caused by data loss.

The survey polled 4,400 IT users and professionals in 22 countries across six continents. For the Asia Pacific region, 800 IT users and professionals participated in the study from India, Singapore, South Korea and Australia.

Interestingly, the study tried to dispel the modern-day IT myth that simply adding more solutions will solve cybersecurity and data protection challenges.

The Acronis’ survey findings are indicative that investing in more solutions does not deliver more protection. In many cases, more solutions mean more complexity to manage protection and less visibility for the IT team, which increases risk.

“This year’s Cyber Protection Week survey clearly illustrates that more solutions do not deliver greater protection, as using separate tools to address individual types of exposure is complicated, inefficient, and costly,” said Rustom Hiramaneck, GM – South Asia, Acronis.

“These findings confirm our belief that the smarter approach is cyber protection, which unifies data protection, cybersecurity, and endpoint management in one,” added Hiramaneck.

Knowledge gap contributes to IT challenges in India
Complicating matters, there is a significant gap in awareness among users and IT pros in India of what IT and cybersecurity capabilities are available to them, which can cause them to lose valuable time, money, and security:

  • 35% of IT users and 11% of IT professionals in India (63% and 16% for global) would not know if their data had been modified without their knowledge because their solution makes determining that kind of tampering difficult.
  • 10% of IT users in India don’t know if their anti-malware stops zero-day threats (43% for global), because their solution doesn’t make that information easily available – but 58% claim to have it. Having easy access to such cybersecurity insights is critical to ensuring data is protected.
  • A shocking 20% of IT pros in India (13% for global) don’t know if their organisation is subject to data privacy regulations. If those responsible for ensuring data privacy don’t know they are culpable, they cannot implement strategies or evaluate the solutions needed to address the requirements. That ignorance puts the business at tremendous risk of major fines for potential compliance violations in 2021.

For anyone using multiple solutions to solve their IT and cybersecurity needs, the lack of transparency into such information only gets worse. Not only must they remember which solution provides a particular data point, they are constantly switching between consoles to find the details they need – leading to inefficiencies and missed insights.

Individuals’ lax approach to protection
The survey also revealed a staggeringly lax approach to data protection among IT users in India:

  • 98% of IT users spent more time on their devices last year (92% for global), and 85% of them took extra steps to protect those devices (just over 50% for global)
  • 35% admit to not updating their devices until at least a week after being notified of a patch, or even longer (41% for global)
  • 98% of IT users reported performing backups, with 40% claiming to back up daily – yet 90% (69% for global) have irretrievably lost data at least once, suggesting that they don’t know how to back up or recover properly

The efforts of individuals to protect their data aren’t keeping pace with threats, which is likely due to false assumptions (such as believing Microsoft 365 backs up their data) or a reliance on automatic solutions.

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