Almost 4m UK businesses are vulnerable to data loss
Britain’s sole traders and micro business owners are the least likely to back-up company data safely, putting sensitive information at risk of loss or theft.
According to research undertaken by Opinium and broadband provider Beaming, almost 1m small business owners do not back-up company data whatsoever, relying on a single master copy.
Meanwhile, a further 2.8m were storing electronic copies in the same location as original data.
While 83% of all businesses backed-up their data to some extent, half of those were only saving it to servers or storage devices in the same premises. Failing to generate copies outside of an organisation leaves firms vulnerable to data loss through theft, fire or malware attack.
The study found that sole traders and micro business owners were least likely to back-up data safely. Just over one in ten used cloud storage services, from companies such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon, to store company information off-site.
Commenting on the findings, Sonia Blizzard, Beaming managing director, urged micro business owners to safeguard sensitive information.
“Our research shows that almost 4m UK businesses are vulnerable to data loss from single events and could potentially become unable to operate. Most businesses, particularly at the smaller end, don’t do enough to safeguard their information, ” she said.
Beaming collected the findings into a table
Blizzard added: “The introduction of GDPR has highlighted the need for secure and resilient data storage in order to mitigate the risk of significant data loss.”
“Wed encourage businesses to think seriously about private cloud or co-location services when it comes to storing highly sensitive data or mission critical applications. These should only be accessed through the most secure forms of connectivity.”
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Blizzard added: “The introduction of GDPR has highlighted the need for secure and resilient data storage in order to mitigate the risk of significant data loss.”
“Wed encourage businesses to think seriously about private cloud or co-location services when it comes to storing highly sensitive data or mission critical applications. These should only be accessed through the most secure forms of connectivity.”
