Symantec Reveals Businesses Worldwide are Struggling with Protecting and Managing their $1.1 Trillion Annual Investment in Digital Information

The results of the inaugural Global State of the Information Survey are in and they reveal that businesses worldwide are struggling with protecting and managing the $1.1 trillion investment they are required to make in digital information to remain competitive. Commissioned by Symantec, the survey of 4,506 organizations of various sizes in 48 different countries reveals that digital information now makes up 49 percent of organization's total value with accompanying new challenges and liabilities that cannot be ignored.

This dramatic increase in digital information has provided new opportunities for businesses of all sizes worldwide to better serve their customers and increase productivity.  However, this same increase in information places additional operational and financial requirements on organizations to effectively protect and manage this information. Symantec's Enterprise Products and Services Group President, Francis deSouza, says, "Successful companies must find ways to more effectively protect their information so they may unleash the productivity it brings."  

The Global State of the Information Survey highlights the challenges that businesses face in their attempts to make the transition into this new paradigm of having to manage and protect the significant increase in the volume of digital information.  Key results from the survey indicate:

• Digital information is increasing. From internal communications, to confidential customer information, to intellectual property, to financial transactions, the amount of digital information that businesses of all sizes worldwide gather, create, manage and store is increasing at an accelerating rate

The total amount of information stored today by all businesses is 2.2 zettabytes with the average enterprise managing more than 100,000 TBs. Even small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) are not immune as they now manage on average about 563 TBs. Further, the survey also reveals that in the next year information is expected to grow 67 percent for enterprises and 178 percent for SMBs.

Factors that are heavily contributing to this rise are internal and external email systems as well as social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The rise in mobile computing devices such as laptop computers, smart phones and PC tablets are also cited as major contributors in this increase in digital information.

• Digital information is expensive. Digital information now accounts for 49% of the total value of businesses. Enterprises annually spend on information $38 million or $3,297 per employee while SMBs spend $332,000 or $3,670 per employee.

The cost of digital information goes well behind the physical costs of hardware and software.  Businesses now have to invest resources in associated digital information management such as data retention policy development and implement, internal and external information governance and possibly eDiscovery solutions.

Protecting and managing digital information is a challenge. In the last 12 months 69 percent of respondents experienced some form of information loss citing human error, hardware failure, security breach and lost or stolen devices as the reasons for this loss. 69 percent also said that confidential information was exposed outside of the company with 31 percent have experienced compliance failures related to digital information.

Respondents also indicated that they were concerned about storage utilization and overwhelmed with the growth of digital information that is unorganized, difficult to access and often duplicated elsewhere. As such, this survey confirms indicates that not only do problems with digital information exist but organizations are starting to see real consequences for their failure to manage it.

• The consequences of losing business information would be disastrous.  Respondents described the impact of data loss to their business as including the following:

• Lost customers (49%)
• Damage to reputation and brand (47%)
• Decreased revenue (41%)
• Increased expenses (39%)
• Tumbling stock price (20%)

In light of all of these costs and risks that digital information presents and the consequences of not managing it, it is not surprising that organizations both small and large may feel overwhelmed in trying to deal with it. In this regards, here are five suggestions to deal with these challenges:

• Focus on the information, not the device or data center. The advent of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and cloud computing has move information outside of the four walls of a company. As such, organizations must now switch their focus to protecting the information as opposed to the device or the data center.

• Not all information is equal. Business need technology that identifies and then separate useless data from valuable business information so they may protect it accordingly.  

• Be efficient. Deduplication and archiving technologies are key technologies to helping companies protect more while storing less so they may keep pace with exponential data growth.
• Consistency is key. It is important to set consistent policies for information that can be enforced wherever it's located... physical, virtual and cloud environments.
• Stay agile. Plan for your future information needs by implementing a flexible infrastructure to support its continued growth.

Faced with loss of customers, deterioration of brand, reduced revenues and even declining stock prices, businesses worldwide are investing $1.1 trillion to manage and protect the digital information that has become a critical asset and key to their ability to remain competitive. Those businesses that immediately begin to research the market and invest in the right infrastructure will successfully make the transition into the digital information world.   Conversely, those businesses that sit on the sidelines and wait or do not do anything at all stand above average risk of failure.