 "Inferior Protection Can Shave Years Off Your Digital Life")
Personal information and precious memories are widely stored on our computers – but over the past five years 45 percent of users have suffered at least one form of data loss. Malware attacks and hardware faults are the greatest dangers to our digital lives, and they can potentially cost us all our most valuable information – as the findings of the latest consumer survey make clear.
Hardware faults are the most frequent reasons for data loss, as reported by 22 percent of respondents to the August 2012 survey held in 17 countries by B2B International on behalf of Kaspersky Lab. The second most frequent cause is malware infection: 13 percent of consumers were not only attacked by a malicious program but lost sensitive data as a result. This figure goes up to 20 percent in regions like South-East Asia. Data loss can be caused by users as well, including accidental deletion of data (11 percent), and physical damage to a computer or a laptop (5 percent). Meanwhile, 3 percent of consumers ran the risk of their personal data falling into the wrong hands when their computer was lost or stolen.
It’s also clear that users want to store information on their computers for several years. Despite the high frequency of data loss, 11 percent of users have information from more than 10 years ago on their computers, and 41 percent have files dating back 3-10 years. Only 6 percent of users try to purge files that are more than six months old, and the overwhelming majority (89 percent) of consumers, regard preserving personal data as extremely important. Further stats back this up: 59 percent of people bought their current PC within the last two years, and most of them have used external hard drives to preserve and transfer older information.
The survey results indicate that preserving personal data – an important aspect of a consumer’s digital life – is almost universally regarded as an important task. Two key security measures significantly reduce the risk of losing personal information: regular backups, and proper protection from malware and other threats.