Data loss costs SA R3.5 billion
A new report finds that South African businesses have lost over R8.95 billion (US$0.8 billion) in the past year from data loss and downtime.
EMC’s Data Protection Index ranks 24 countries on the maturity of their data protection strategies, and assesses the relative preparedness of their businesses.
It found that data loss and downtime cost enterprises $1.7 trillion in the last twelve months, or the equivalent of nearly 50% of Germany’s GDP.
South Africa was ranked 7th out of 24 countries. Just 18% of organisations can be described as being ‘ahead of the curve’ when it comes to data protection practices, EMC said of local companies.
Half (52%) of South Africa organisations have suffered unplanned system downtime in SA, while 23% have suffered data loss.
Unplanned downtime cost the country $0.8 billion, while data loss cost $0.3 billion, with the top three causes being hardware failure, a loss of power and software failure.
Overall, data loss is up by 400% since 2012 while, however, 71% of organisations are still not fully confident in their ability to recover after a disruption, the report said.
The EMC Data Protection Global Index surveyed more than 3,000 IT decision makers in 24 countries to create a ranking of protection readiness.
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