'Small biz not serious about data protection'

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Majority of small businesses are not taking the most basic steps to secure and protect their virtual environments, according to a Symantec survey. The survey — 2011 Small Business Virtualisation Poll — also finds that small businesses have a strong interest in virtualisation, but are still learning how to adopt it in their organisations,

The findings of its survey examined the adoption of virtualisation within small businesses and its impact on their organisations.

“Virtualisation presents an opportunity for small businesses with seventy-two per cent in the APJ region considering server virtualization,” said Ajay Goel, managing director, India and SAARC, Symantec.

Also read: Opportunities abound for SMEs to adopt IT

He added that the majority of respondents cited cost efficiencies and disaster-recovery readiness as benefits they’re hoping to gain, with most still early in the adoption cycle.

“We also found that many small businesses are neglecting to protect their virtual environments, largely due to budget and staffing constraints,” he said

The survey is based on 658 respondents in 28 countries worldwide, of which 306 were from the Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) region.

Survey highlights

1. Financial benefits driving decision to virtualise:

Seventy-two per cent of respondents from APJ said their organisations are considering virtualisation. Not surprisingly, financial benefits rank highest among reasons to adopt server virtualisation.

Reduced capital expense was cited by 68 per cent, while 67 per cent respectively said reduced operating expense and the ability to improve disaster-recovery readiness would drive their decisions to deploy virtualisation. Other benefits include the ability to use fewer servers for the same number of applications (65 per cent) and improved server scalability (65 per cent). 

Also read: Lack of emphasis on security causing web breaches

2. Limited IT skills holding some small businesses back:

Despite their interest, small businesses are finding it difficult to move from discussions to execution. Only eight per cent of APJ-based respondents have deployed virtualised servers and they are focusing their early-stage efforts on simpler, less critical application areas.

Top challenges include performance (64 per cent), backup (61 per cent) and workload capacity and planning issues (58 per cent). Nearly a third of small businesses not now planning virtualisation cited lack of experience as a factor.

3. Data on virtualised servers lacking basic security protection:

As small businesses move to virtual environments, they do not protect and secure their data. Only 13 per cent always back up their virtualised servers and 24 per cent backup infrequently or not at all. They are not doing any better in securing their data — only 40 per cent are completely secured.

Respondents say budget and staffing issues are preventing them from taking these essential actions. Even those who said they are somewhat or completely secure are, in fact, less secure than they think. A staggering 76 per cent forego endpoint protection, 73 per cent do not have antivirus on their virtual servers, and 51 per cent don’t have a firewall.

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Recommendations

There are some simple things that small businesses can do to make sure they are properly protecting their data and systems.

1.Define a virtualisation strategy: Work with an IT consultant to develop a strategy. Proactively develop guidelines and assess your data protection and security needs. Determine if moving to these cloud services are right for you. Once you have a strategy, develop a plan and stick to it.

2.Secure your virtual environments: Consider what security solutions you need to secure your virtual environment, including a firewall, antivirus, and endpoint security. Make sure you have established security practices as an additional layer of protection.

3.Protect your data: Have a simplified approach to backup. Implement a solution that protects both physical and virtual environments. Consider a data deduplication solution to save space and time.