Businesses lose data despite backing up

Half of Australian consumers or businesses who have lost valuable data had a backup system in place at the time of the loss, a new survey suggests.

The survey from data recovery firm Kroll Ontrack indicates that the most common backup system is an external hard drive.

Kroll Ontrack surveyed 654 of its customers in North America, Europe and APAC. The results show that of the Australian respondents with a backup system in place at time of data loss, 61% were using an external hard drive.

Around 14% used a cloud backup solution and 4% had a tape backup drive. And 64% of those with a backup system said they diligently backed up their data on a daily basis.

But in each case the backup systems failed to prevent data loss due to one or more oversights. Such oversights can include: only connecting external drives occasionally, leaving computers turned off during a scheduled backup, running out of space on the destination drive or excluding important files from the backup process.

Across the three regions covered in the survey, 64% of recent customers indicated that they lost business data and 36% experienced a personal data loss.

Respondents indicated that the most common barriers to implementing an effective backup system were the time and expenses required to research and implement a system.

Kroll Ontrack recommends that companies and individuals looking to avoid the loss of valuable data set an automatic backup schedule, ensure backups are running to this schedule and regularly check that backed up files are intact.

Image courtesy of Jaymis Loveday under CC