Businesses Need To Put The "I" Back In IT

Symantec Corp. has announced the India findings of its first ever State of Information Survey. According to the survey, business data in Indian organisations is expected to grow 67 percent in the next 12 months. From confidential customer information and intellectual property, to financial transactions, organisations in India possess massive amounts of information that not only enable them to be competitive and efficient – but also stay in business. In fact, the survey revealed that digital information makes up 51 percent of an organisation’s total value. However, with information spiralling rapidly, 60 percent Indian businesses are struggling to effectively manage and protect their digital information.

“ Our survey shows that only 15 percent of businesses in India can confidently use their business information without being either too permissive or too restrictive about its access,” said Anand Naik, Managing Director- Sales, India and SAARC, Symantec, “Without the ability to properly protect their information assets, this data can become a liability. To counter this, businesses in India need to put in place a plan to manage their data assets so they can have a true competitive advantage.”

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Information Is Skyrocketing And It’s Expensive

Businesses of all sizes are dealing with enormous amounts of data. The total size of information stored today by all businesses globally is 2.2 zettabytes. Small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) on average have 563 terabytes of data, compared with the average enterprise that has 100,000 terabytes. The survey also reveals that information is expected to grow 67 percent over the next year for enterprises and 178 percent for SMEs.

Globally, on average, enterprises spend $38 million annually on information, while SMEs spend $332,000. However, the yearly cost per employee for SMEs globally is a lot higher at $3,670, versus $3,297 for enterprise. For example, a typical 50-employee small business spends $183,500 on information management, whereas a typical large enterprise with 2,500 employees would spend $8.2 million.

Information Loss Is High And Has Significant Impact

The survey found that a huge 89 percent of Indian organisations have lost information in the past year.

These incidents have a significant impact: 31 percent of Indian organisations revealed that losing some/all of their information could lead to decreased revenues, apart from loss of customers (34 percent), increased expenses (33 percent) and brand damage (35 percent). Furthermore, 31 percent of respondents were unable to comply with government regulations and 40 percent faced similar challenges with external legal requirements around information management in the past year.

Protection Measures Are Falling Short

With so much at stake, protecting information should be a top priority, yet businesses are still struggling. In the last year, besides 89 percent of organisations losing information, 94 percent of businesses in India have had confidential information exposed outside of the company, and 31 percent have experienced compliance failures related to information. Another challenge is the amount of duplicate information businesses are storing – an average of 38 percent of data is duplicated. Storage utilisation is also low, at only 23 percent within the firewall and 20 percent outside.

All these risks and inefficiencies result in businesses spending more than necessary on storing and protecting their information. A key issue identified by 30 percent of businesses in India is information sprawl – the overwhelming growth of information that is unorganised, difficult to access and often duplicated elsewhere.

Businesses Need To Put The “I” Back In “IT”

To help businesses more effectively protect their information, Symantec has the following recommendations:

Focus on the information, not the device or datacentre: With BYOD and cloud, information is no longer within the four walls of a company. Protection must focus on the information, not the device or datacentre.

Not all information is equal: Business must be able to separate useless data from valuable business information and protect it accordingly.

Be efficient: Deduplication and archiving help companies protect more, but store less to keep pace with exponential data growth.

Consistency is key: It is important to set consistent policies for information that can be enforced wherever it’s located… physical, virtual and cloud environments.

Stay agile: Plan for your future information needs by implementing a flexible infrastructure to support continued growth.