The cost of data loss to UK companies is more than double the global average, according to a survey released today.
EMC’s Global IT Trust Curve survey, administered by Vanson Bourne, interviewed 1,600 IT and 1,600 business decision makers across 16 countries and 10 industry sectors.
The most costly events suffered by respondents globally were security breaches, which were attributed to an average financial loss of $860,273 over the last year. The UK average was substantially higher at $1,158,077.
The average cost of data loss to global respondents was $585,892, compared to the mammoth UK average of $1,302,895, whilst the figures for downtime were $494,037 and $611,375 respectively.
This was despite the percentage of UK companies suffering incidents more or less corresponding to the global average. Whilst more UK companies (45%) admitted to experiencing unplanned downtime (global 37%), less reported security breaches (21%, compared to global 23%) and data loss (22%, global 29%).
Respondents from all countries cited a startling lack of senior-executive confidence and readiness around the critical IT requirements of continuous availability, advanced security, and integrated backup and recovery.
China received the top maturity ranking with IT decision makers from the country implementing the highest concentration of the aforementioned requirements, whilst the UK ranked in eighth. More than half (57%) of all respondents fell into the lower maturity categories, with only 8% given a ‘Leader’ badge.
Other results seemed to point to a lack of security awareness among business decision makers. Whilst 27% of global IT decision makers reported being victims of a security breach in the past 12 months, only 19% of business leaders said the same thing.
“Among the many powerful insights that flow from this global study, the rampant lack of senior-executive confidence stands out as both alarming and, unfortunately, a sign of the times,” said Christian Christiansen, program VP for IDC's Security Products and Services Group.
“Nearly half of respondents say their senior management has zero confidence that their organisations are prepared with adequate availability, security, and backup and recovery.
“That one startling fact stands as a wakeup call for company boards to make the necessary investments to brace against both external and self-imposed disruptions and threats to their IT systems and data.”
