Despite an increase in investments in new systems to enable remote working and cybersecurity during the Covid-19 pandemic, a majority of Indian organisations faced unexpected downtimes in 2020 due to data loss, according to the second annual Cyber Protection Week survey by cybersecurity firm Acronis.

According to the global survey, 57 per cent of Indian organisations suffered unexpected downtimes in 2020 because of data loss.

This is as 70 per cent of companies in India now run as many as ten solutions simultaneously for their data protection and cybersecurity needs, while the remaining 30 per cent run over ten solutions, the report said.

“Not only does investing in more solutions not deliver more protection, in many cases trying to manage protection across multiple solutions creates greater complexity and less visibility for the IT team, which increases risk,” the report said.

“This year’s Cyber Protection Week survey clearly illustrates that more solutions do not deliver greater protection, as using separate tools to address individual types of exposure is complicated, inefficient, and costly,” said Rustom Hiramaneck, General Manager – South Asia at Acronis. “These findings confirm our belief that the smarter approach is cyber protection, which unifies data protection, cybersecurity, and endpoint management in one.”

Lack of awareness adds to challenges

A “significant gap” in awareness among users and IT pros in India of what IT and cybersecurity capabilities are available to them further adds to the challenges.

As per the survey, 35 per cent of IT users and 11 per cent of IT professionals in India would not know if their data had been modified without their knowledge because their solution makes determining that kind of tampering difficult. At a global level, it stands at 63 per cent for and 16 per cent, respectively.

Apart from this, 10 per cent of IT users in India are unaware if their anti-malware solution stops zero-day threats as compared to 43 per cent globally. This is because “their solution doesn’t make that information easily available,” as per the report. 58 per cent claim to have it.

Furthermore, 20 per cent of IT pros in India and 13 per cent globally are unaware if their organisation is subject to data privacy regulations.

“If those responsible for ensuring data privacy don’t know they are culpable, they cannot implement strategies or evaluate the solutions needed to address the requirements. That ignorance puts the business at tremendous risk of major fines for potential compliance violations in 2021,” the report said.

User approach to data protection

From a user perspective, in terms of data protection, as 98 per cent of IT users in India spent more time on their devices in 2020, 85 per cent of them took extra steps to protect those devices. However, 35 per cent of respondents admitted to not updating their devices until at least a week after being notified of a patch, or even longer as compared to 41 per cent users globally.

98 per cent of IT users reported performing backups, with 40 per cent claiming to back up daily. Yet 90 per centos users have irretrievably lost data at least once.

The findings from Acronis’ annual survey is based on responses from 4,400 IT users and professionals in 22 countries across six continents, including India.

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