Acronis has released the findings of its second annual Cyber Protection Week survey, which uncovered a dangerous disconnect between the need for organizations to keep their data protected and the ineffective investments they’ve made trying to reach that goal.
The global survey discovered that 80% of companies now run as many as 10 solutions simultaneously for their data protection and cyber security needs, yet more than half of those organizations suffered unexpected downtime last year because of data loss.
The findings from Acronis’ annual survey, which polled 4,400 IT users and professionals in 22 countries across six continents, dispel the myth that simply adding more solutions will solve cyber security and data protection challenges. Not only does investing in more solutions not deliver more protection, in many cases trying to manage protection across multiple solutions creates greater complexity 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. These findings confirm our belief that the smarter approach is cyber protection, which unifies data protection, cyber security, and endpoint management in one,” said Serguei ‘SB’ Beloussov, Founder and CEO of Acronis.
There is a significant gap in awareness among users and IT pros of what IT and cyber security capabilities are available to them, which can cause them to lose valuable time, money, and security. 68% of IT users and 20% of IT professionals would not know if their data had been modified without their knowledge because their solution makes determining that kind of tampering difficult.
43% of IT users don’t know if their anti-malware stops zero day threats because their solution doesn’t make that information easily available. Having easy access to such cyber security insights is critical to ensuring data is protected.
10% of IT pros don’t know if their organization 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 cyber security 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.
Acronis has long recognized the cost, efficiency and security challenges that arise from using multiple solutions, which is why the company pioneered the field of cyber protection, integrating cyber security, best-of-breed backup and endpoint management in a single solution. Managed service providers can build their IT services on Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, while businesses can gain the same unified capabilities with the company’s on-premises solution, Acronis Cyber Protect 15, states the agency.
The survey also revealed a lax approach to data protection among IT users. 83% of IT users spent more time on their devices last year, yet only half of them took extra steps to protect those devices 33% admit to not updating their devices until at least a week after being notified of a patch.
90% of IT users reported performing backups, yet 73% 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.
Individual IT users are said to get the same integrated cyber protection as MSPs and IT professionals with Acronis True Image 2021.
The challenges of protecting and securing data, applications and systems will continue to grow in the post pandemic world. Acronis recommends five simple steps for data protection:
• Create backups of important data.
• Update your operating systems and applications.
• Avoid suspicious emails, links, and attachments.
• Install antivirus, anti-malware and anti-ransom ware software while enabling automatic updates.
• Adopt a single cyber protection solution to have the central management and integrated protection.
