Arcserve Study Finds Businesses Still Losing Mission-Critical Company Data

Arcserve, Inc. announced key findings from its annual independent global research study that showed the loss of critical data continues to disrupt businesses and remain an issue for organizations.

In the research study of experiences and attitudes of IT decision makers (ITDMs), 76% of respondents reported a severe loss of critical data in their organization. Of that number, 45% had permanent data loss. Data is a priceless commodity, and these findings underscore the importance of building data resilience with a robust data backup and recovery plan with data integrity at the core to prevent severe business disruptions.

The research study also found that many organizations could not maintain business continuity on time once data was lost or compromised. It is vital for businesses to recover data quickly, especially in today’s always-on world.

• 83% of respondents said that 12h or less is an acceptable level of downtime for critical systems before there is a measurable negative business impact. Still, only 52% could recover from a severe data loss in 12h or less. 

• 29% of the businesses surveyed couldn’t recover data for one day or more. 

The research results also revealed that an approach to DR is needed. Organizations should continuously update, test, and document their DR plan to build data resilience. The importance of protecting and recovering data should also be elevated to all company levels with specific goals.

• 95% of respondents in the survey said their company has a DR plan. However, only 24% have a mature plan that is well documented, tested, and updated.

• 83% said their organizations include data resilience in their strategies. Still, only 23% have a mature approach with associated goals to track progress.

Florian Malecki, EVP, marketing, said: “Our annual survey reinforces the business imperative for organizations to implement a data resilience strategy that incorporates mature data backup and disaster recovery plans. We live in a world of growing ransomware attacks and frequent natural disasters. Any downtime from data loss can be destructive for a business from impacting sales to losing customer loyalty. Arcserve aims to help businesses avoid costly business disasters and reputational damage from data loss with our best-in-class unified data resilience solutions suite. Our backup and recovery solutions, and immutable storage offering, ensure a near-zero impact on businesses.“

About research conducted by Dimensional Research:
1,121 IT decision-makers completed the survey. All participants had a budget or technical decision-making responsibility for data management, data protection, and storage solutions at a company with 100-2,500 employees and at least 5TB of data. The survey was fielded in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, the UK, USA, and Canada.