Communications of the ACM
Symantec: World Has 2.2 Zettabytes of Business Data That Costs $1.1 Trillion to Store and Secure
Credit: Litle.com
Organizations globally hold approximately 2.2 zettabytes of data and spend roughly $1.1 trillion to secure and provide access to it, according to a new Symantec study.
The study involved 4,056 information technology (IT) professionals at organizations in 38 countries.
The study found that on average, $38 million is being spent each year by larger enterprises and $332,000 by small to midsize businesses (SMBs) to store and secure their business data. Thirty percent of respondents said they experience "information sprawl" as data is held both inside and outside the organization.
Symantec's Sean Regan observes that SMBs annually spend slightly more on a per-employee basis on information storage, security, and management--$3,670 per employee--compared with the $3,297 per employee for enterprises, largely due to economies of scale.
In the past 12 months, 69 percent of the IT professionals said their organizations had lost at least some business data or exposed sensitive information. Thirty-one percent said they failed at some point to pass critical audits related to complying with data security and privacy regulations.
The study also found that about 75 percent of organizational data is stored in-house and about 25 percent in the cloud, and that organizations on average make use of just 31 percent of the storage they own.
From Network World
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