Companies struggling with data protection solutions, survey says.

• Position: INFO SECURITY

A recent survey revealed that while global organizations' management of their IT and software infrastructure has improved, data loss and system downtime remain obstacles. And, according to the EMC Global Data Protection Index, 82% of respondents said their data protection solutions are not sufficient to meet future business demands and challenges.

The index, which surveyed 2,200 IT decision makers in organizations across 18 countries and 11 industries, found that:

* 29% of organizations have suffered data loss in the last 12 months at an estimated cost of $914,000, on average.

* 52% have suffered unplanned systems downtime in the past 12 months at an estimated average cost of $555,000 and 22 hours of lost work time.

* 36% have suffered unplanned system downtime and/or data loss due to an external or internal security breach.

Of the organizations EMC surveyed, 45% cited hardware failure as the biggest cause for data loss or unplanned system downtime--down from 53% in 2014--and 34% cited power loss and hardware failure. External breaches created issues for 23% of organizations, while internal breaches affected 16%. Employee sabotage was cited by 10% of companies, while another 10% said they were affected by the failure of cloud service providers.

According to the index, the time it took for an organization's system to be restored increased with the number of data recovery and protection vendors that it relied upon. Those using one vendor experienced an average downtime of 19 hours, while those with three experienced inaccessible systems for 23 hours. Organizations with four or more vendors had to wait an average of 37 hours before restoration.

In addition, the index found that the cost of data loss increased with the number of vendors used. According to the index, using one vendor kept the cost of a data loss below average at $789,193; organizations with two vendors had to pay an average of $911,000; and those with four or more had expenses of more than $1.7 million.

The average cost of data loss for an organization was higher than unplanned downtime, the index found.

Michael Wilke, EMC senior director of...