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.<\/p>\n
EMC\u2019s Data Protection Index ranks 24 countries on the maturity of their data protection strategies, and assesses the relative preparedness of their businesses.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s GDP.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Half (52%) of South Africa organisations have suffered unplanned system downtime in SA, while 23% have suffered data loss.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The EMC Data Protection Global Index surveyed more than 3,000 IT decision makers in 24 countries to create a ranking of protection readiness.<\/p>\n