🥇New threats to confidential data: results from the Acronis global study

Hello, Habr! We want to share with you the statistics that we managed to gather during our fifth global survey. Read on to find out what causes data loss, what threats users fear the most, how often backups are made today and on what media, and most importantly, why data loss is only expected to increase.

Previously, we traditionally celebrated World Backup Day on March 31 every year. However, in recent years, the question of data protection has become so urgent that traditional approaches and solutions to ensure data security no longer meet the needs of both individual users and organizations. Therefore, World Backup Day has transformed into a full Global Cyber Protection Week, during which we publish the results of our research.

For five years, we have been asking individual users, who are well-versed in information technology, questions about their experiences related to backup and data recovery, data loss, etc. This year, around 3,000 people from 11 countries around the world participated in the research. In addition to individual users, we aimed to increase the number of IT specialists surveyed. To make the survey results more indicative, we compared the 2020 data with the 2019 results.

Individual Users

In the realm of individual users, the situation regarding data protection has long ceased to be optimistic. Although 91% of individuals back up their data and devices, 68% still lose data due to accidental deletion, hardware or software failures, or infrequent backups. The number of people reporting data or device losses sharply increased in 2019, and in 2020, it rose by an additional 3%.

Over the past year, individual users have increasingly turned to cloud backups. The number of people storing backups in the cloud has increased by 5%, and those preferring hybrid storage (both locally and in the cloud) has risen by 7%. New users have joined the ranks of remote backup enthusiasts, including those who previously relied on built-in and external hard drives.

Thanks to the clearer and more convenient online and hybrid backup systems, more important data is now stored in the cloud. At the same time, the proportion of people who do not back up at all has increased by 2%. This is an interesting trend. It likely indicates that users are giving up in the face of new threats, believing that they cannot cope with them.

However, we decided to ask people directly why they are reluctant to back up, and in 2020, the main reason given was the belief that 'it's simply not necessary.' Thus, many people still underestimate the risks of data loss and the benefits of backing up.

On the other hand, over the past year, the number of people who believe that backing up takes too long has slightly increased (we understand them—this is why developments like Active Restore) are underway, as well as those who are confident that setting up protection is too complicated. Meanwhile, less than 5% of people still believe that backup software and services are too expensive.

It is possible that soon, the number of people who consider backup optional may decline, as individual users' awareness of modern cyber threats has increased. Concerns about ransomware attacks increased by 29% over the past year. Fears that users might be subjected to cryptojacking have risen by 31%, and the number of people worried about social engineering attacks (such as phishing) has grown by 34%.

IT specialists and businesses

Since last year, IT specialists from various countries have participated in our research and surveys related to the World Backup Day and the World Cybersecurity Week. Thus, in 2020, we have the opportunity to compare responses and track trends within the professional community for the first time.

The frequency of backups has generally increased. There are now specialists who perform backups more than twice a day, and significantly fewer who do backups once or twice a month. There is an understanding that such infrequent backups are not very useful, but this has also led to a rise in the number of those who don't perform any backups at all. Indeed, why should we if we can't do them more often, and what good is a monthly backup for business? However, this opinion is definitely misguided, as modern products allow for flexible backups across the company, and we have discussed this multiple times in our blog.

Among those who do conduct backups, the majority have retained their existing approach to storing replicas. Nevertheless, in 2020, there emerged specialists who prefer remote data centers to cloud storage.

More than a third of respondents (36%) store their backups in "cloud storage (Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, AWS, Acronis Cloud, etc.)." A quarter of all surveyed professionals keep their backups "on local storage devices (tape drives, storage arrays, specialized backup devices, etc.)," while 20% use a hybrid of local and cloud storage.

This is intriguing data, as the hybrid backup method, which turns out to be more effective than many other approaches and cheaper than replication, is not used by four out of five information technology specialists.

Considering such decisions regarding the frequency and location of backups, it is not surprising that the share of information technology specialists who faced data loss leading to downtimes has significantly increased. This year, 43% of organizations lost their data at least once, which is 12% more than in 2019.

In 2020, nearly half of professionals faced data loss and downtimes. And just one hour of downtime can cost an organization 300,000 dollars.

Moving forward: 9% of specialists reported that they are unaware whether their company has suffered from data loss, and whether this has caused business downtime. This means that roughly one in ten professionals cannot confidently discuss the established protection and any level of guaranteed availability of their information environment.

Now, this is the most interesting part of the research. Compared to 2019, IT specialists have become less worried about current cyber threats. Technicians have grown more confident in their ability to avoid cyber threats or handle them. However, combining the statistics on downtimes with this data indicates industry problems, as cyber threats are becoming increasingly complex and sophisticated, while the extra complacency of specialists plays into the hands of attackers. The issue of social engineering alone in attacks on individuals with specific accessdeserves increased attention.

Conclusion

By the end of 2019, even more individual users and business representatives encountered data loss. The difficulty of implementing constant data protection and regular backups plays a significant role in creating security gaps that attackers exploit.

To simplify the implementation of protection systems, we are currently working on Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, which will help streamline the mechanisms for deploying hybrid data protection. By the way, you can already join the beta testing now. In upcoming posts, we will provide more details about the new technologies and solutions from Acronis.

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