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European businesses consider physical damage, electronic attacks and errant employees as the main threats to their data, according to new research published today in the latest edition of the Hitachi Data Systems’ Storage Index. Hitachi Data Systems is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT).
The research, conducted bi-annually among a sample of more than 800 IT directors in 21 countries across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), looked at European attitudes towards business continuity strategies specifically in relation to the security and retrieval of data.
"Companies are faced with an ever increasing data burden,” offers Michael Väth, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Hitachi Data Systems, EMEA. "The research shows that 78% of European businesses believe data volumes will increase over the next two years, with e-mail being the primary contributor. With mounting legislation demanding the retention and storage of data, not to mention an ever-increasing reliance on digital information for day to day business transactions, the security and availability of information is becoming of paramount importance.”
Of the 821 firms questioned, 82% claim to have a disaster recovery strategy in place, with 65% of that group also having a remote disaster recovery site to which they replicate important data. However, despite fire being cited as a main threat to data, 35% of firms do not currently back-up data remotely, with 31% also believing that the priority given to business continuity by their company’s executive board is too low. This suggests that there is still a healthy market for storage vendors offering off-site data replication and retrieval solutions.
Adds Väth: "It is no longer enough for firms to have a local storage solution, however robust. Quite apart from legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley which requires companies to keep data secure, the dependency on digital information for daily business transactions means that firms cannot risk losing access to that information for a prolonged period of time, let alone losing the actual information itself.”
The research also highlighted regional differences in attitudes towards business continuity. While fire (57%), computer viruses (55%) and human error (50%) were the three most common perceived threats to data across all countries - followed by criminal attacks/hacking (32%) and downtime (31%) - terrorism, though only polling 11% in total, was a prominent concern for firms in the UK, Spain and Israel.
These findings were also mirrored when analysing the research across vertical markets. Financial institutions cited terrorism as a far greater threat (22%) than the other sectors; retail, distribution, manufacturing and other commercial enterprises.
"The case for business continuity is made,” concludes Väth. "Regulatory compliance and a greater array of business threats are driving the market. The onus is now on storage vendors to deliver solutions that focus on the fast, effective backup and retrieval of data while delivering a degree of business advantage, be it reduced TCO, simplification of storage management policies or direct contributions to the bottom line due to improved custom service and support.”
07.09.2005, Hitachi, Ltd
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