Acronis Cyber Protection Week Global Report

KEY RESEARCH FINDINGS

Investing in more solutions doesn’t mean more protection

To protect business data, applications, and systems – particularly during the pandemic’s shift to remote work environments – organizations added new solutions to their IT environments. It’s not working.

• ~75% of IT professionals report that their organizations have all recommended cybersecurity technologies in place
• 80% of organizations have up to 10 different protection and security tools running simultaneously
• Despite this, securing remote environments, ensuring availability, and maintaining employee productivity are still top challenges for IT pros
• More than half of organizations saw downtime due to data loss last year

A lack of awareness is creating a lack of protection

Significant gaps in awareness regarding cybersecurity and technology capabilities are costing individuals and organizations time, money, and security.

• Just 13% of IT users and IT professionals follow backup best practices
• 68% of IT users and 20% of IT professionals wouldn’t know if their data had been unexpectedly modified because tools don’t make it easy to find out
• 43% of IT users don’t know if their anti-malware stops zero-day threats because it’s not easy to find out
• ~25% of IT users don’t know what ransomware, cryptojacking, Dos/DDoS, and IoT attacks are
• 10% of IT pros don’t know if they’re subject to data privacy regulations, risking major fines for potential compliance violations

IT users don’t feel accountable for the protection and security of their data and devices

Personal reliance on technology continues to grow but efforts to protect that technology aren’t keeping pace, likely due to false assumptions and reliance on automatic solutions.

• 83% of IT users spent more time on their devices last year. Only half of them took extra steps to protect those devices.
• 1/3 of IT users don’t update their devices until at least a week after being notified
• While 90% of IT users perform backups, 73% have irretrievably lost data at least once, suggesting that they don’t know how to back up or recover properly
• Patch management and vulnerability assessment tools that would simplify cybersecurity see low adoption