Almost 1 in 2 Hong Kong firms suffered data loss, downtime in last 12 months

Over 2 working days of unexpected downtime.

It has been noted in the findings of a new global data protection study that data loss and downtime cost Hong Kong enterprises US$2.2 billion in the last twelve months, compared to the average of US$34 billion across the Asia-Pacific and Japan region.

According to a release from EMC, global data loss is up by 400% since 2012.

Meanwhile, the release also said that, surprisingly, 66% of Hong Kong organizations are still not fully confident in their ability to recover after a disruption.

EMC Global Data Protection Index, conducted by Vanson Bourne, surveyed 3,300 IT decision makers from mid-size to enterprise-class businesses across 24 countries, including 125 respondents from Hong Kong.

Here's more from EMC:

Impact of Data Loss and Downtime: The good news is that the number of data loss incidents is decreasing overall. However, the volume of data lost during an incident is growing exponentially.

In Hong Kong: 57% of enterprises surveyed experienced data loss or downtime in the last 12 months. The average business experienced more than 2 working days (22 hours) of unexpected downtime in the last 12 months. Other commercial consequences of disruptions were loss of employee productivity (63%), and loss of a new business opportunity (54%)

New Wave of Data Protection Challenges: Business trends, such as big data, mobile and hybrid cloud create new challenges for data protection in Hong Kong: 31% of businesses lack a disaster recovery plan for any of these environments and just 6% have a plan for all three

In fact, 77% rated big data, mobile and hybrid cloud as ‘difficult’ to protect. With 41% of all primary data located in some form of cloud storage, this could result in substantial loss.

The Protection Paradox: Adopting advanced data protection technologies dramatically decreases the likelihood of disruption. And, many companies turn to multiple IT vendors to solve their data protection challenges.

However, a siloed approach to deploying these can increase risks: Globally, the findings showed that enterprises that had not deployed a continuous availability strategy were almost twice as likely to suffer data loss as those that had.

In Hong Kong, those using three or more vendors to supply data protection solutions lost 8.48 times as much data as those who unified their data protection strategy around a single vendor.

In Hong Kong, those with three vendors were also likely to spend an average of US$2 million more on their data protection infrastructure compared to those with just one.

EMC Data Protection Index survey participants were awarded points based on their responses, ranking their data protection maturity in one of four categories (see methodology for further details).

The vast majority, 73% of businesses in Hong Kong rank in the bottom two categories for data protection maturity.

Globally, 13% rank ahead of the curve; 11% are classed as “Adopters” and 2% considered “Leaders”.

Of all the countries surveyed, China has the greatest number of companies ahead of the curve (30%) and the UAE the least (0%).

Globally, very large enterprises of more than 5,000 employees were twice as likely (24%) to be ahead of the curve than smaller enterprises of 250-449 employees (12%); companies in the U.S. and The Netherlands were the greatest vanguards outside of Asia Pacific and Japan (at 20% and 21% respectively).