Hey Habr! We would like to share with you the statistics that we managed to collect during our fifth global survey. About why data loss occurred more often, what threats users are most afraid of, how often backups are made today and on what media, and most importantly, why there will only be more data loss - read under the cut.
We used to traditionally celebrate Worldwide Backup Day every year on March 31st. But in recent years, the issue of data protection has become so acute, and in our new quarantine reality, traditional approaches and data protection solutions can no longer meet the needs of both individuals and organizations. Therefore, World Backup Day has been transformed into a whole , within which we publish the results of our study.
For five years, we've been asking individual IT savvy users questions about their experiences with data backup and recovery, data loss, and more. This year, about 3000 people from 11 countries took part in the study. In addition to individual users, we tried to increase the number of respondents among IT specialists. And to make the results of the surveys more revealing, we compared the data from 2020 with the results of 2019.
Individual users
In the world of personal users, the situation with data protection has long ceased to be rosy. While 91% of individuals back up their data and devices, 68% still lose data as a result of accidental deletion, hardware or software failure, or copying too infrequently. Number of people reporting data or device loss , and in 2020 they became another 3% more.
Over the past year, individual users have become more likely to back up to the cloud. The number of people storing backups in the clouds increased by 5%, and by 7% - they prefer hybrid storage (both locally and in the cloud). The fans of remote backup were joined by users who used to make a copy on the built-in and external hard drive.
With online and hybrid backup systems becoming clearer and more convenient, more important data is now stored in the clouds. At the same time, the share of people who do not make backups at all increased by 2%. This is an interesting trend. She most likely says that users simply give up in the face of new threats, believing that they still can’t cope with them.
However, we decided to ask people ourselves why they do not want to make backups, and in 2020 the main reason was the opinion that "it's just not necessary." Thus, until now, many people underestimate the risks of data loss and the benefits of backup.
On the other hand, over the year the number of people who believe that backups take too long has slightly increased (we understand them - this is why ), and also confident that the protection setup is too complicated. At the same time, less than 5% of people who consider backup software and services too expensive remain.
Perhaps in the near future, the number of people who consider backups optional may become less, because the awareness of individual users about modern cyber threats has grown. Concerns about ransomware attacks have increased by 29% over the past year. Fears that cryptojacking can be used against the user have grown by 31%, and now they are afraid of attacks using social engineering (for example, phishing) by 34% more.
IT professionals and business
Since last year, IT experts from around the world have been participating in our research and surveys dedicated to World Backup Day and World Cyber Defense Week. So in 2020, for the first time, we have the opportunity to compare responses and track trends in the professional environment.
The frequency of backups has increased in most cases. Specialists appeared who make backups more than 2 times a day, and much fewer specialists began to backup 1-2 times a month. The realization came that such rare copies were not very useful, but it also led to an increase in the number of those who do not make any copies at all. Indeed, why, if we cannot do them more often, and there is practically no sense in a monthly copy for business? However, this opinion is definitely erroneous, since modern products allow you to set up flexible backups throughout the company, and we have already talked about this on our blog more than once.
Those who still carry out backups, for the most part, have retained the existing approach to storing replicas. However, in 2020 there are specialists who prefer a remote data center to copy to the cloud.
More than a third of respondents (36%) store backups in "cloud storage (Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, AWS, Acronis Cloud, etc.)". A quarter of all professionals surveyed store backups “on a local storage device (tape drives, storage arrays, specialized backup devices, etc.)”, and 20% use a hybrid of local and cloud storage.
This is interesting data, because the hybrid backup method, which is more efficient than many other approaches, and also cheaper than replication, is not used by four out of five IT professionals.
Given these decisions regarding the frequency and location of backups, it's no surprise that the percentage of IT professionals who experience data loss leading to downtime has risen dramatically. This year, 43% of organizations lost their data at least once, up 12% from 2019.
In 2020, almost half of the professionals faced data loss and downtime. But just one hour of downtime can cost an organization .
Further - more: 9% of specialists reported that they do not even know if their company suffered from data loss, and whether business downtime was dictated by this. That is, approximately one in ten professionals cannot speak with confidence about the built-in protection and at least some level of guaranteed availability of their information environment.
And this is the most interesting part of the study. Compared to 2019, information technology professionals have become less worried about all current cyber threats. Techies have become more confident in their ability to avoid or deal with cyber threats. But the combination of downtime statistics with this data speaks of problems in the industry, because cyber threats are only becoming more complex and sophisticated, and the extra relaxation of specialists plays into the hands of attackers. The only problem of social engineering in deserves more attention.
Conclusion
At the end of 2019, even more individual users and business representatives faced data loss. At the same time, the complexity of implementing real-time data protection and regular backups plays an important role in the formation of security holes that are exploited by attackers.
To simplify the implementation of protection systems, we are currently working on Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, which will help simplify the mechanisms for implementing hybrid data protection. By the way, join . And in the following posts, we will tell you more about new technologies and solutions from Acronis.
Only registered users can participate in the survey. , you are welcome.
Have you experienced data loss?
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25,0%With significant1
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75,0%With a slight3
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0,0%Not sure0
4 users voted. 4 users abstained.
What threats are relevant to you (your company)
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0,0%ransomware0
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33,3%Cryptojacking1
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66,7%Social engineering2
3 users voted. 3 users abstained.
Source: habr.com