Robert Computer Technical & Business Analysis Blog: AVG states that 43% of Computer Users Annually Lose Data. What’s the truth?

In reading a CRS Report for Congress dated back to September 2006, I gathered some startling statistics as to lack of surety IT professionals had in their own systems. They state: that "an August 2006 study by the Elk Rapids, MI-based privacy management research company Ponemon Institute found that only 37% of information technology professionals believed their company is effective at preventing data breaches (Deborah Rothberg, "IT Pros Say They Can't Stop Data Breaches," eWeek, August 30, 2006 at [http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2010325,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000614]) . Citing a lack of resources and high product costs as barriers to preventing data leakages, only 43% believed their company would detect a large data breach (involving more than 10,000 customer records) more than 80% of the time (Sponsored by Port Authority Technologies, independently conducted by Ponemon Institute, National Survey on the Detection and Prevention of Data Security Breaches, August 28, 2006, at [http://www.portauthoritytech.com/resources/downloads/wp_Ponemon_Institute_Study.pdf]).

With companies cutting budgets in the current economic challenge, what is stopping companies from not spending the necessary measures to ensure the integrity of their data. Yes, of course for the competitive edge companies will want to protect databases that hold information pertaining to new-release products, customer profiles, and financial data. But, what about employee data, is it safe? We understand that laws are place, but no one finds out about these losses unit someone tells, and that is usually forced by a Federal Agency that comes to audit the system or another auditing agency. Will these groups be paid off, are their ethics left in the system, is there enough government funding to pay these auditors? Our economy has a great deal to do with our security.

After searching and researching credible sources, I found one site from Pepperdine University. They actually cite their sources; whereas, the two sites using this claim to sell a service to back-up data, did not cite their sources. The article states that information loss has many sources, but they only credited forty percent of data loss to hardware failure (David M. Smith, PhD, The Cost of Lost Data). From the sources cited from the university's article I would trust the information as credible. With 40% of hard drives failing, I personally if I were a hard drive manufacturer I would invest into research searching for the way to improve the life a hard drive. I would then develop the hard drive and use it as a great marketing for my companies name as the company with quality hard drives. If this could be proven, it would raise the question to large business and government entities to switch to a more reliable hard drive. So there is a business opportunity waiting to explode.

I end with my statement that yes, it is a great idea to back up files in some form or another whether this be by trusting a company to encrypt your information and uploading to their site, where they probably use hard drives setup on a RAID 5 to prevent data loss. If you decided to do the same the files would be with you, under your responsibility to protect and maintain replacements of the hard drives. Because it's RAID 5 you can pull out a faulty Hard drive of the three and insert the new one and the data will be restored.

Sources:
CRS Report for Congress, Data Security Breaches: Context and Incident Summaries, Updated September 28, 2006
http://ipmall.info/hosted_resources/crs/RL33199_060928.pdf

The Cost of Lost Data, David M. Smith, Pepperdine University
http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/033/dataloss.html?addcomment=1&savecomment=1&messaged=Your%20comment%20has%20been%20submitted%20for%20processing.&#listcomments

Two site making this claim in order to sell their service:
http://www.barbarabrabec.com/Computertalk/carbonite-online-backup-program.htm Carbonite hosts AVG.