62% of U.S. Enterprises Without Backup Policy for Laptops

Druva Software announced results of a survey conducted across the United States that revealed over 64 percent of respondents do not have a laptop backup policy.  

The reasons for this varied, although 70 percent did think that a laptop backup policy was necessary, and another 28 percent plan to implement one in future. These statistics indicate that organizations have started to take data stored on laptops seriously however, are still leaving data vulnerable to loss and not taking the risk seriously.
 
According to a Ponemon Institute report commissioned by Intel, the average cost of a lost or stolen laptop is $50,000, with worst-case scenarios reaching close to $1,000,000. Conversely, in the Druva survey, 44 percent of respondents thought the cost of a lost or stolen laptop was less than $10,000, and one-third of respondents believed the loss was negligible. Only 11 percent of respondents have realistic expectations as to the cost of a lost laptop, responding it would cost more than $30,000. The responses in this survey point to a large gap in perceived costs versus real costs.
 
There were other findings from the survey that point to a lack of control over laptop data protection including the fact that 18 percent do not have the ability to retrieve files from a lost laptop or catastrophic failure. Also, 40 percent of respondents believe that it would take at least one day or longer to retrieve files from a lost laptop or catastrophic failure.
 
"This survey demonstrates that corporate IT is ignoring a gaping hole, which is the need to protect data stored on laptops in the enterprise. There is a sizeable gap between what IT believes the cost of a lost laptop is versus the reality, and IT is not taking it seriously," said Jaspreet Singh, founder and CEO of Druva. "Unprotected laptops bring both financial and security risks to an organization, and ignoring the issue is not strategic. Companies need a truly complete laptop backup and data protection solution that takes the guesswork out of what might happen in the future and gives the control to IT, where it belongs."

Additional Key Survey Findings:

• 46 percent are likely or very likely to consider offerings for endpoint protection in the next six to 12 months
• 44 percent believe that simple-to-install configuration and management is the number-one priority when choosing a laptop backup solution
• 36 percent say a non-intrusive end-user experience is the number-one priority in a laptop backup solution
• 31 percent say bandwidth and storage savings are their number-one priority in a laptop backup solution
• 57 percent do not have a data protection solution such as data encryption, remote delete, location trace, or anything else
• Over 25 percent of respondents plan on implementing a data protection solution within the next two years

Survey Methodology
The independent survey asked 140 IT managers their opinions of laptop backup in organizations conducting business in the US.