HOSTED NEWS
Data loss affects 32% of businesses, with accidental or malicious deletion accounting for 71% of situations.
The most common causes of data loss are:
- Human Error
- Viruses, Malware & Ransomware
- Hard Drive Damage
- Power Outages
- Computer Theft
- Liquid Damage
- Disasters
- Software Corruption
- Hard Drive Formatting
- Hackers and Insiders
Human Error
Human error is one of the greatest causes of data loss be it accidental or malicious. In fact accidental or malicious deletion accounts for 71% of data loss. Without realising what they've done, employees can overwrite or delete important files and information. Nobody's perfect, or should that be "pobodys nerfect"? Human error can also involve data loss or damage through hard drive damage, liquid spills, software corruption and hard disk formatting.
Viruses, Malware & Ransomware
It's well known that viruses and malware can cause data loss - often catastrophic. Huge chunks of data can be deleted or held to ransom - often the only answer is to pay the ransom demands too. Emails or downloaded files are the most common causes of viruses or malware to find their way onto a computer or network. Anti-malware / anti-virus software should always be active, but threats evolve all the time. Regularly backed up data is the only way to guard against total data loss.
Hard Drive Damage
Hard drive damage is a significant cause of data loss. Hardrives are fragile, particularly those with "spinning disks". Around 140 thousand hard drives crash every week. 60% of these are due to mechanical issue and the other 40% are due to human mishandling or misuse.
Power Outages
Unless your building has a backup power supply or a UPS, a power outage can mean a significant business interruption. Unfortunately, shutting a system down without warning can result in loss of unsaved data and damage to hard drives which in turn means loss of data. Needless to say, regular backup can help protect your data and battery backup/UPS can protect from power surges or power cuts.
Computer Theft
With so many employees now using a laptop rather than a desktop, theft and or loss of a device is all too common. Around 25% of IT theft occurs from cars or on public transport. 23% takes place in the office, 15% in airports and hotels and 12% in restaurants. On top of losing the hardware, the threat of a data breach is also significant and potentially far more costly than the loss of the hardware.
Liquid Damage
Although it sounds really obvious, liquid damage is still common place and now on the rise due to more people working from home. Serious ingress of water can cause a short circuit making it very difficult to retrieve data. Corrosion inside the computer can often take some time, so often it may appear that no damage has been done. Unfortunately the corrosion takes time as the metals and acids/alkalines react together so computers may start to mis-behave some weeks or months later and then eventually stop working at all.
Disasters
"It'll never happen to me" isn't that what we all think? Unfortunately "it" has to happen to someone and fires, floods, explosions and other natural disasters can destroy a business, literally. 93 percent of companies that lost their data center for 10 or more days from a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year. Because natural disasters can destroy a company’s technology entirely, it is often not possible to recover data lost due to a disaster. This is why it is so crucial to back up data in a remote location that cannot be compromised by a local disaster.
Software Corruption
Improper shutdowns can corrupt your data or delete your progress, wasting time and losing valuable data. Once software is corrupted, it may become impossible to run and data may well be trapped inside. Programs need to be shutdown properly before a computer can be shutdown to avoid potential data loss.
Hard Drive Formatting
Formatting a hard drive can mean instant data loss. Sometimes there is a way to undo the damage, but it really depends how it's been done. While accidentally reformatting a hard drive can lead to panic when files and documents can no longer be accessed, you can often recover lost data from hard drive formatting by running a data recovery software.
Hackers & Insiders
Hackers can gain access to your data in a variety of ways. Using servers with poor security, not having adequate firewalls/network security and using easily guessed/hacked passwords. The unfortunate truth is that data is sometimes stolen or compromised by employees themselves or other insiders.
