Data loss is an inevitable event that can happen to anyone from an individual PC user to professionals who use it in their offices. Therefore, to overcome data loss, people usually create and maintain the backup of their data. However, despite their best efforts to secure data, data loss occurs. In the past one decade, it is observed that one of the major causes for business loss in companies is data loss. Their unplanned and unstructured way of preserving the precious data has shut down a lot of small to medium-sized companies in the past two years.

There are various reasons that are responsible for data loss. These reasons may vary from natural disasters (like flood, earthquake, or fire) to accidental deletion of some files to IT or system failure. Let us see some of the facts related to data loss that occurs due to various above-mentioned reasons and its consequences:

• The organizations that undergo major disasters go out of their business in just three years.
  
• On the other hand, the businesses that encounter critical systems crash or IT failure shut down within a year of data loss.
  
• 44% of the companies that undergo severe fire are unable to reopen, whereas 33% of the organizations that survived in this disaster do not last for more than 3 years.

A graph of possible data loss reasons and their percentage is shown herein that represents the following measures:

http://www.nextofwindows.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/data-loss-facts.png

• From the above graph, it is seen that 30-40% of the problems that interrupt the business are caused due to the internal malfunction of software or hardware damage.
  
• Human errors are another major portion that covers the major area of this graph. Around 40% cases of data loss come under this category.
  
• The other most prominent cause of data loss is virus infection. Approximately 20% of the data loss cases are encountered due to this reason.
  
• Rest 10% data loss scenarios are seen because of natural disasters and sabotage.

Some other facts that users must know about data loss are:

• The rate of hard drive crash in United State itself is around 140,000 per year.
  
• In the year 2008, around 23% of overall malicious activities were contributed by USA only. That means USA was the top country responsible for overall malicious software or activities.

To handle such situations and to prevent data loss, most of the small to medium level organizations spend their 6 to 8 hours in planning and maintaining data recovery plans with business continuity plans. However, if they maintain regular backups, then they can avoid such situation. If they think or spend time in planning and creating data recovery strategies, then opting for professional data recovery software is recommended.

 

Full Article