A recent survey of data storage professionals by Quantum Corp unearthed some rather chilling facts. Most telling of all being that just ten percent of survey respondents believed their corporate data was safe in the event of some kind of disaster.
Given the long-time focus in the industry on disaster recovery (and all the related disciplines), this seems like a particularly low figure. However, 27% of respondents reported experiencing some form of data security incident, of which 15% (near-enough to half) were due to natural disasters. Presumably this would lead to an increased focus on DR into the future.
Other key findings from the survey:
- 11% (up from 8% in 2010) described their data as "extremely vulnerable"
- 31% (down from 51%) described their data as "minimally vulnerable"
- Virus attack and operating system failure were regarded as the most common security issues
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Half of respondents noted that their SLAs would be compromised in the event of a failure to restore. This would impact both reputational and financial measures.
"Natural disasters such as this summer's wildfires have dominated recent discussion around disaster recovery planning for IT, but there are other threats to data security that are even more pressing for IT managers," said Robert Clark, senior vice president, Data Protection Group, Quantum. "We're seeing a strong, sustained interest in the value of deduplicated and replicated disk backup and path-to-tape solutions for a best-practices approach to DR. In addition, many customers are now seeking all-in-one solutions that protect both physical and virtual environments. Increasingly, companies are also turning to cloud software and services for a solution to DR challenges."
The survey was conducted by Toluna on behalf of Quantum in February 2012 based on a sample of 500 pre-qualified data storage decision makers from organisations with over 100 employees.
