A Lack of Data Backup & Disaster Recovery Solutions for SMBs
According to a study Infrascale conducted in March of this year, about 21% of small to medium scale businesses lack data backup or disaster recovery solutions. The study was conducted using over 500 C-level executives, with CEOs consisting of 87% of the participant group. The remainder of the group were CTOs and CIOs. 58% of these C-level executives named security vulnerability as the biggest challenge for their data storage.
People Have Different Opinions on Data Protection
Data protection can be separated into different parts and some parts can be taken more seriously than other sections depending on who is making the decision.
“Data protection can come into play in a wide array of important ways – including data security and encryption, data recovery, email protection and data archiving. It also provides the ability to recover quickly from a disaster, protection from and mitigation of ransomware, and physical device protection. Plus, it can prevent user error,” — Russell P. Reeder, CEO of Infrascale.
When survey participants were asked what data protection means, 61% mentioned encryption, data backup and data security as their main concerns. Almost 59% of the survey group mentioned data recovery while 54% interpreted data protection as anti-malware services. 46% of the group claimed that data protection involves email protection, while 45% of the group interpreted data protection as data archiving and being able to recover from a disaster quickly enough to get back to business operations. 44% of the survey participants believe that data protection means ransomware mitigation. The same percentage also mentioned the protection of physical devices for endpoints such as smartphones and PCs. Finally, 32% of participants believe that data protection means being able to prevent user error.
According to Reeder, “all of the above are valuable for businesses. These benefits contribute to the success of many businesses today and implementing data protection to these ends will better position organizations for the future”.
Different Industries Also Have Varying Opinions on Data Protection
The study was done with executives from different industries and some of them gave varying opinions on the important aspects of data protection given their industry. 89% of C-level executives in the legal sector understand data protection as providing data encryption and security. 71% of healthcare leaders reported the same views of data protection as the executive legal practitioners. 67% of retail/eCommerce and 52% of telecommunications executives also agreed that data protection should provide data encryption and security. On the other hand, 61% of leaders in the education sector believe that the significant parts of data protection are data recovery and data backup. Executives in banking, accounting and finance believe that what makes data protection essential is data backup.
The reason for the varying opinions is not farfetched, each industry has its unique concerns. For example, practitioners in the healthcare sector are more committed to ensuring that patients’ data are secured from the public, so for them, encryption may be more important than data backup.
Bottom Line
Overall, most executives agree on what is a more pressing concern regarding data protection, and that is the risk of cyberattacks. While most of the SMBs executives put up strong security measures to protect their data, 21% of them did not. To make matters worse, 13% of them didn’t have any security measure in place. The excuse being that SMBs do not have enough capital to invest in data protection. What they should know, however, is that no matter the size of the business, data protection is too important to be neglected.