A new report has revealed that while a typical organisation’s data grew by 42 per cent over the last 18 months; two-thirds of IT and security leaders believe they are not up to speed in securing the same and mitigating risks.
A survey of more than 1,600 IT and security decision-makers, across 10 countries, including India, by Rubrik Zero Labs has revealed that globally, one in two organisations suffered loss of sensitive data over the last year. Of these, one in six experienced multiple losses of data in the past 12 months, says the report titled 'The State of Data Security'.
Other major global findings indicate that 98 per cent of organisations report significant data visibility challenges while two in three report the likelihood of employees accessing data in violation of corporate data policies.
In India, almost half the IT leaders surveyed recognised data security as a missing component, while three in 10 put their organisations at high risk of data loss over the next 12 months.
The greatest of these risks (54 per cent) comes from malicious cybercriminal activities. As many as 54 per cent of the people surveyed believe that the adoption of Artificial Intelligence will positively impact the ability to secure sensitive data while a far smaller number see no such effect.
As data grows, with organisations averaging 24.8 million sensitive data records, they struggle to protect it. Three in five organisations store the data in locations across cloud, on-premises, and SaaS (software as a service) environments. A minuscule (less than 4 per cent) reported a dedicated, sensitive data storage location.
The most widely-reported data types compromised included personally identifiable information (38 per cent), corporate financial data (37 per cent), and authentication credentials (32 per cent).
Abhilash Purushothaman, vice-president and general manager, Rubrik (Asia), said the report should serve as a ‘wakeup call’ for Indian IT leaders.
“It emphasises the crucial importance of data resilience and data security in today’s hyper-distributed environment, highlighting the elevated risks for sensitive data, particularly in the face of rapidly evolving, sophisticated ransomware attacks”, he said.
The way ahead would include comprehensive ransomware recovery and remediation plans that go beyond traditional backup and recovery tools.
“The need of the hour is to democratise cyber resiliency with architectural solutions and platforms that can accelerate cyber detection, recovery and resilience across all levels of cyber expertise," he said.
Steven Stone, head of Rubrik Zero Labs, said security lapses as data proliferates could cripple businesses, as both data volume and the manners of attack rose. “Organisations need to have the right visibility into their data to secure it, with a clear plan for cyber resilience that delivers business continuity,” he said.