Symantec’s 2010 Information Management Health Check survey has found that a majority of enterprises are not following their own advice when it comes to information management.

96% Australian and New Zealand respondents believe in the value of an information retention plan, but only 50% have one.

“The gap between enterprise information management goals and practices is driving common mistakes such as over retention and improper backup, recovery and archiving practices,” said Craig Scroggie, Vice President and Managing Director, Symantec Australia and New Zealand (pictured).

Symantec says that businesses are spending far more time and money on the negative consequences of poor information management and discovery practices than they would by working to change them.

Scroggie continued, “The survey results found that too many enterprises save information indefinitely instead of implementing policies that allow them to confidently delete unimportant data or records, and therefore suffer from rampant storage growth, unsustainable backup windows, increased litigation risk and expensive and inefficient discovery processes.”

The report said that enterprises are retaining far too much information and that 25% of the data backed up is not needed and that enterprises are misusing backup, recovery and archiving practices.

The survey was conducted in June 2010 and is based on responses from 1,680 senior IT and legal executives in 26 countries including 150 IT and legal executives in Australia and New Zealand.