72% of South African IT decision makers aren’t certain they can recover business-critical data from cyberattacks or data loss, and more than two thirds believe more employees working from home have increased exposure to data loss from cyber threats.

Moreover, 46% lack confidence that all their business-critical data can be recovered in the event of a destructive cyberattack or data loss. This is however better than the global average of 67%.

This is according to the Dell Technologies 2021 Global Data Protection Index (GDPI) which reveals that organisations are facing several data protection challenges driven by the constant threat of ransomware, the consumption of emerging technologies, and data growth.

The Index also found that 12% percent believe emerging technologies- such as cloud-native applications, Kubernetes containers, artificial intelligence and machine learning pose a risk to data protection, and the lack of data protection solutions for newer technologies was a top-three challenge for organisations.

The market research also found that 20% of South African respondents reporting data loss in the last year and nearly half (44%) experiencing unplanned system downtime.

According to a separate Dell survey of 1,000 global IT decision makers, organisations are combating continued data growth and increased data protection complexities. The study found that organisations are managing more than ten times the amount of data than they did five years ago – from 1.45 petabytes in 2016 to 14.6 petabytes in 2021.

On average, the cost of data loss is around four times higher for organisations using multiple data protection vendors compared to those using a single-vendor approach.

Dell Technologies also references a recent IDC survey which states that more than one third of organisations worldwide have experienced a ransomware attack or breach that blocked access to systems or data in the previous 12 months.

Doug Woolley, GM of Dell Technologies South Africa.

Doug Woolley, Managing Director, Dell Technologies South Africa said; “As the digital economy grows, so too do data volumes and, in turn, the cyber threat surface area. At Dell Technologies we provide our customers with software and managed services and a single point of call, reducing risk and providing peace of mind that their business-critical data is protected from edge to core to cloud. Our customers can feel confident that through our single-vendor approach, all facets of their data landscape will be taken into account and protected.”