A recent survey by the security firm found that almost 90% of businesses have experienced data loss in the last year, due to IT systems failing, attacks on IT systems or human error. As a result of this threat, CA says that investment in data protection and recovery continues to rise, with 94% of businesses maintaining expenditure on it and 35% increasing budgets for it during 2010 to 2011.
As you might expect, however, the challenge of protecting data is driving adoption of cloud solutions. In fact, researchers found, 78% of UK businesses are displaying high levels of confidence in the safety of data in the cloud and are making it a key component of their data protection strategy to decrease these data loss incidents.
This confidence, says the report, is driving investment in cloud solutions, with 41% of businesses expected to increase investment in them over the next 12 months.
The report – titled ‘Insights: Data Protection and the Cloud 2011’ – took in responses from 200 companies in the UK and 1,987 in total across Europe.
Of the businesses surveyed, 39% say they have data that resides in the private cloud and 21% in the public cloud, with 68% of those using private cloud trusting that their data and applications are properly protected in the event of a disaster, whilst 78% of those using public clouds are confident in the data protection service level agreements made with their provider.
Commenting on the results of the survey, Chris Ross, EMEA vice president of CA Technologies, said that it is an exciting time for the industry, as many companies are embarking on cloud initiatives.
“It’s particularly telling that companies are now realising that cloud can be a useful tool for back-up and disaster recovery purposes. Organisations using the cloud in this way have less need for their own remote site, and have to spend less time monitoring data recovery systems, allowing them to focus on growing the business”, he said.