Organisations face challenges in data protection because of ransomware threats and increasing engagement with emerging technologies, according to global tech giant Dell Technologies.
"To address cybersecurity challenges, companies need to adopt a holistic cybersecurity and data protection strategy to reduce risk and ensure resilience in the event of a ransomware or other cyberattack," said Noppadol Punyatipat, managing director of Dell Technologies Thailand.
Citing Dell's 2021 Global Data Protection Index (GDPI) survey, Mr Noppadol said organisations are encountering various kinds of challenges in their data protection following a spate of ransomware attacks and their engagement in new emerging technologies, such as cloud-based applications and artificial intelligence (AI).
The survey gauged 1,000 IT decision makers from organisations around the world, including 250 from APJ (Australia, India, Japan, Singapore and South Korea).
Some 72% of respondents in APJ agreed that their organisations have increased exposure to data loss from cyber threats with the growth of employees working from home while 68% expressed concerns about their organisations' data protection measures which may not be sufficient to cope with cyberthreats.
Of US$959,493 in average cost of data loss globally in the last 12 months, $640,239 was in APJ.
The cost of data loss in the past 12 months worldwide is four times higher for organisations using multiple data protection vendors as compared to those using a single-vendor approach.
In a survey by IT market research firm IDC, more than one third of organisations worldwide faced a ransomware attack or breach that blocked access to systems or data in the past 12 months.
According to the GDPI survey, 67% of the respondents worldwide and 67% in APJ lacked confidence that all of their business-critical data could be recovered in the event of a destructive cyberattack or data loss.
Some 63% of the respondents worldwide and 64% in APJ believed emerging technologies, such as cloud-native applications, Kubernetes containers, AI and machine learning, pose a risk to data protection and a lack of data protection solutions for newer technologies was one of the top three data protection challenges for organisations.
In APJ, 77% of the organisations cited flexibility and optimised IT operations as main reason for pursuing as-a-service, while the top three priorities for as-a-service offerings are networking, backup and storage.
To address the challenges, Dell is providing new software and services to accelerate virtual machine backup data availability, simplify management of large data sets and maintain business continuity.
