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Acronis Cyber Protection Week 2021 Report

ByGeng Hui

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Acronis, a global leader in cyber protection, recently released their findings of their second annual Cyber Protection Week Survey. From this survey, Acronis uncovered a dangerous disconnect between the need for organisations to keep their data protected and the ineffective instruments that they have made trying to reach that goal.

During year 2020 with the COVID-19 global pandemic situation impacting the whole world, companies purchased new systems to enable and secure remote workers. However, those investments that the companies are not paying off. This global survey discovered that 80% of companies now run as many as 10 solutions simultaneously for their data protection and cybersecurity needs. Yet more than half of those organisations suffered downtime last year because of data loss.

Acronis annual survey polled 4,400 IT users and professionals in 22 countries across six continents. The findings from their annual survey dispel the myth that simply adding more solutions will solve cybersecurity and data protection challenges. Investing in more solutions does not equate to more delivering more protection. In many cases trying to manage protection across multiple solutions creates more complexity and less visibility for the IT team, which increases risk.

“This year’s Cyber Protection Week survey clearly illustrates that more solutions do not deliver greater protection, as using separate tools to address individual types of exposure is complicated, inefficient, and costly,” said Serguei “SB” Beloussov, Founder and CEO of Acronis. “These findings confirm our belief that the smarter approach is cyber protection, which unifies data protection, cybersecurity, and endpoint management in one.”

What are the gaps that contribute to IT challenges?

There is a significant gap in awareness among users and IT professionals of what IT and cybersecurity capabilities are available to them. Not only does this complicate matters, this can cause them to lose valuable time, money and security.

68% of IT users and 20% of IT professionals would not know if their data had been modified without their knowledge because their solution makes determining that kind of tampering difficult.
43% of IT users don’t know if their anti-malware stops zero-day threats because their solution doesn’t make that information easily available. Having easy access to such cybersecurity insights is critical to ensuring data is protected.
A shocking 10% of IT pros don’t know if their organization is subject to data privacy regulations. If those responsible for ensuring data privacy don’t know they are culpable, they cannot implement strategies or evaluate the solutions needed to address the requirements. That ignorance puts the business at tremendous risk of major fines for potential compliance violations in 2021.

For anyone using multiple solutions to solve their IT and cybersecurity needs, the lack of transparency into such information only gets worse. The user must not only remember which solution provides a particular data point, they are also constantly switching between consoles to find the details that they need, resulting in inefficiencies and missed insights.

Acronis has long recognised the cost, efficiency, and security challenges that arise from using multiple solutions, which is why the company pioneered the field of cyber protection, integrating cutting-edge cybersecurity, best-of-breed backup, and endpoint management in a single solution. Managed service providers can build their IT services on Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud, while businesses can gain the same unified capabilities with the company’s on-premises solution, Acronis Cyber Protect 15.

Individuals’ lax approach to protection

The survey also revealed a staggeringly lax approach to data protection among IT users.

83% of IT users spent more time on their devices last year, yet only half of them took extra steps to protect those devices
33% admit to not updating their devices until at least a week after being notified of a patch
90% of IT users reported performing backups, yet 73% have irretrievably lost data at least once, suggesting that they don’t know how to back up or recover properly

Individuals are not doing enough and putting in enough effort to protect their data, they are also not keeping pace with threats, which is likely due to false assumptions or a reliance of automatic solutions.

Individual IT users can gain the same integrated cyber protection as MSPs and IT professionals with Acronis True Image 2021, the first personal cyber protection solution that unites AI-enhanced anti-malware and award-winning backup in one.

What Action Plans can you do for Cyber Protection Week?

The challenges of protecting and securing data, applications, and systems will continue to grow in the post-pandemic world. To ensure that data is protected, Acronis recommends five simple steps:

Create backups of important data. Keep multiple copies of your backups, with one local copy for fast recovery and one off-site in the cloud to guarantee recovery if disaster destroys your copies.
Update your operating systems and applications. Outdated systems and apps lack the security fixes that stop cybercriminals from gaining access. Regular patching is required to avoid exploits.
Avoid suspicious emails, links, and attachments. Most malware infections are the result of social engineering techniques that trick unsuspecting individuals into opening infected email attachments or clicking on links to websites that host malware.
Install antivirus, anti-malware, and anti-ransomware software while enabling automatic updates so your system is protected against malware.
Consider adopting a single cyber protection solution to have the central management and integrated protection needed to meet today’s IT requirements.

Cybersecurity, cyber protection and data protection are not just for companies and organisations, individuals can and must adopt and implement them too. Too much protection can a bad thing, you can consider adopting a single cyber protection solution.

* Information and picture courtesy of Acronis *