More Solutions Doesn’t Mean More Protection

New research has found that running multiple protection and cybersecurity solutions simultaneously did not prevent data loss in many organizations last year.  

The finding was part of the second annual Cyber Protection Week survey conducted by global technology company Acronis. Researchers asked 4,400 IT users and professionals in 22 countries across six continents about their cybersecurity solutions. 

The results showed that while 80% of companies now run up to 10 different solutions simultaneously to protect their data and computer systems, more than half of those organizations suffered unexpected downtime in 2020 after losing data.

“Not only does investing in more solutions not deliver more protection, in many cases trying to manage protection across multiple solutions creates greater complexity and less visibility for the IT team, which increases risk,” said an Acronis spokesperson.

Researchers identified a gap in awareness among IT professionals and users when it came to knowing what their organization’s cybersecurity capabilities actually were.

The survey found that 68% of IT users and 20% of IT professionals would be unable to tell if their data had been altered without their knowledge, because their cybersecurity solution makes determining that kind of tampering difficult. 

Nearly half of IT users (43%) were in the dark when it came to knowing if their anti-malware stops zero-day threats, because their solution doesn’t make such information easily available. 

A tenth of IT professionals admitted not knowing if their organization is subject to data privacy regulations, potentially exposing their company to major fines for compliance violations. 

Researchers uncovered an individual approach to cybersecurity that they described as “staggeringly lax.”

While 83% of IT users said they spent more time on their devices in 2020, only half of them took extra steps to protect those devices. A third (33%) admitted waiting at least a week to update their devices with a new patch after being notified of the patch’s release.

The survey findings suggest that IT users don’t know how to back up their data correctly since 90% reported performing backups; however, 73% said they had lost data at least once.