Survey highlights need to put information back into IT

Businesses need to put the ‘i’ back into IT according to security software company Symantec, which has just released its first ever State of Information Survey.

The survey, which polled more than 4500 organisations worldwide, including 200 in ANZ, highlighted that New Zealand and Australian businesses are struggling to protect their information efficiently.

Sean Kopelke, Symantec director, specialist solutions, Pacific, says the survey revealed that 45% of the value of ANZ businesses is tied up in the information they own, with enterprises in the region spending on average $38 million annually on information, while SMBs spend $332,000. Globally, digital information is costing businesses $1.1 trillion, including $309 billion on storage, $324 billion on security, $295 billion on compliance and $117 billion on access.

The report says 61% of businesses in ANZ experienced some form of information loss in the last year, compared with 69% globally. In addition 74% of ANZ respondents (69% globally) have had confidential information exposed outside of the company and 25% (31% globally) have experienced compliance failures related to information.

Meanwhile the amount of duplicate information is soaring, with an average of 43% of data in ANZ duplicated – on par with the global figure of 42%.

Symantec says in order to more effectively protect their information, businesses need to focus on the information, not the device or data center and be able to separate useless data from valuable business information and protect it accordingly.

The company is also advocating deduplication and archiving to help companies protect more, but store less to keep up with the exponential data growth; consistent policies for information that can be enforced wherever the data is located – be it physical, virtual or cloud – and planning for future information needs by implementing a flexible infrastructure to support continued growth.