London’s Businesses “Facing Daily Data Loss Risks”, Says EMC

Employees travelling with work devices are proving to be a major security risk for their organisations, according to new findings.

Research from EMC and Mozy found that over a third (34 percent) of workers admitted to losing a work device with data stored on it over the past 12 months, with laptops, smartphones, USB drives and hard drives the main victims.

Additional research by EMC found that 45 percent  of organisations aren’t able to recover all their data following a data loss incident, with the average business facing an annual financial loss of $585,892.

Risky business

Overall, 1.2 exabytes of data moves through London each day –enough to stream 60,000 years of DVD-quality video, according to SearchStorage, and EMC says that the findings highlight the risk of moving data from a safe, controlled environment (the office) to an unsafe, uncontrolled environment (the outside world).

In an office, employees may be prevented from using unsecure file sharing services in case it escapes corporate control.  But counterintuitively, at the end of the day, the same employees might carry this data home on their laptops.

In order to combat this, the company has offered five top tips to help prevent data loss on the move:

• Staff education and security policies:Employees are critical to a successful security policy. Staff do not need to understand the technology being deployed but must understand their responsibility when it comes to protecting the company’s sensitive data.
• Data encryption: Data encryption will ensure that no one will be able to make sense of the content if a device, such as a laptop or USB containing data is lost or stolen.
• Create strong passwords: It sounds simple, but so many people use passwords that are just too easy to break. Instead, passwords should be complex, containing numbers and letters and they should be changed regularly.
• Back up, back up, back up:If you lose your data on the move and it isn’t backed up, it’s gone forever. Simple and regular back up procedures will ensure that if data is stolen, or lost, it can be recovered.
• Make use of the cloud: A cloud-based backup or disaster recovery solution allows you to store a copy of your data in a place where it is secured but accessible in the case of corruption, theft or simply losing a device.  It’s a great way to support on-the-go users who may not be in the office or connected to a corporate network enough for an on premise backup solution.

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