China rates itself as world’s #1

The Global IT Trust Curve survey, administered by independent market research firm Vanson Bourne, spans 3,200 interviews across 16 countries and 10 industry sectors.

China received the top maturity ranking: Chinese IT decision makers reported implementing the highest concentration of sophisticated continuous availability, advanced security, and integrated backup and recovery technologies. The UK ranked eighth in maturity on the IT Trust Curve. Underscoring swift and aggressive technology investments to solidify their world influence, three of the four most mature countries -- China, South Africa and Brazil -- are BRICS nations. Japan ranked last on the IT Trust Curve in the 16-nation survey.

David Goulden, EMC President and Chief Operating Officer, said, “The four big megatrends in information technology today are cloud computing, Big Data, social networking and mobile devices. Adoption and maturity of these trends must float upon a sea of trust — trust that my information is secure in the cloud, trust that my data won’t be lost or stolen, trust that my IT will be operational when it needs to be — which, these days, is all the time. The more trust that can be earned and guaranteed, the bigger and faster the impact of these trends. Conversely, the less trust that is established, the more limited these trends will be. Where countries fall on the IT Trust maturity curve could affect their overall ability to compete.”

Chief among the findings are:
• Lower levels of maturity permeate the globe:
o More than half (57%) of all respondents fall into the lower maturity categories, while only 8% place in the Leader category.
o The higher organizations land on the maturity curve, the more likely they are to have already implemented more strategic and leading-edge technology projects such as Big Data Analytics.
• Lack of confidence in technology infrastructure:
o Nearly half (45%) of all respondents globally report that their senior executives are not confident that their organizations have adequate availability, security, and backup and recovery capabilities. In the UK this number increases to 46%.
o When asked about executive confidence levels, the percentage of all respondents within each maturity level who said their senior executives are confident that their organizations have adequate availability, security, and backup and recovery are: Laggard (39%), Evaluator (51%), Adopter (65%) and Leader (81%). Within the UK, the percentages who report their senior teams are confident are: Laggard (35%), Evaluator (46%), Adopter (62%) and Leader (100%).
o Japan has the smallest percentage of respondents (31%) reporting that their senior teams have confidence in these key aspects of IT; Germany has the highest percentage (66%).
o 19% (nearly one in five) of respondents worldwide cite an overall lack of trust in their technology infrastructure. In the UK this number decreases slightly to 18%.
• Significant disparity exists between how IT and business leaders perceive improvements:
o While globally, 70% of IT decision makers consider the IT department to be the motivation/drive for future resilient and secure IT infrastructure, the number drops to 50% for business decisions makers when asked the same question. The split within the UK is 63% of IT decision makers and 36% of business decision makers.
o A similar perception gap extends in key disciplines such as security. While overall 23% of respondents globally reported being victims of a security breach in the past 12 months, this was 27% of IT decision makers compared to only 19% of business decision makers, indicating they are not aware of all technology incidents that impact the business. The overall average of 23% compares to 21% of all respondents within the UK reporting being victims of a security breach.
• Organizations with higher levels of maturity avoid – and recover more quickly from – disruptive incidents … and with reduced consequence. For example, globally:
o 53% of organizations in the Leader segment of the IT Trust Curve reported data recovery time measured in minutes or less for their most mission critical applications. The percentage drops to 28% across all maturity tiers.
o 76% of companies in the Leader segment believe they are able to recover 100% of their lost data in every instance versus only 44% in the Laggard segment.
o Overall, organizations in the lowest maturity segment (Laggard) lost one and a half times more money over the last 12 months as a result of downtime than those in the highest maturity segment (Leader).
o Security breaches were the most costly events suffered by respondents globally, who reported an average financial loss over the last 12 months of $860,273 due to breaches, followed by $585,892 and $494,037 respectively for data loss and downtime. In the UK the averages were $1,158,077 for security breaches, $1,302,895 for data loss and $611,375 for downtime.
• Widespread unplanned downtime, security breaches and data loss:
o 61% of all respondents’ companies have suffered at least one of the following incidents: unplanned downtime (37%), security breach (23%) or data loss (29%) in the last 12 months. In the UK, the percentages change to: unplanned downtime (45%), security breach (21%) and data loss (22%) in the last 12 months, with 61% experiencing at least one of these.
o Top 4 consequences globally across organizations experiencing at least one of the above incidents within the last 12 months were loss of employee productivity (45%), loss of revenue (39%), loss of customer confidence/loyalty (32%) and loss of incremental business opportunity (27%). Within the UK, the results change to the following: loss of employee productivity (61%), loss of revenue (31%), loss of an incremental business opportunity (30%), and loss of customer confidence/loyalty (26%).
• Budget constraints (52%) reigned globally as the #1 obstacle to implementing continuous availability, advanced security, and integrated backup and recovery solutions. Resources and/or workload constraints (35%), poor planning (33%) and knowledge & skills (32%) rounded out the top four overall. China was the only country that did not report budget as the #1 obstacle, instead sighting resources and/or workload constraints (50%). Within the UK, the top constraints are: budget (57%), resources and/or workload constraints (48%), culture (flexibility, acceptance) (35%), and knowledge & skills (30%).
• Top security concerns identified across all respondents were third party application access (43%) and protection of intellectual property (42%), pointing to the need for more advanced technology and intelligence-driven models:
o There remains a heavy reliance on “prevention-oriented” security tools, with more than 80% of all respondents using anti-virus and firewalls as the two most popular security solutions.
o Just 18% worldwide have adopted Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) and even fewer, 11%, have adopted Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) solutions, which provide the necessary monitoring and response capabilities needed to defend against more advanced threats.
• Highly-regulated industries throughout the world displayed proportionally higher maturity levels:
o In addition to the IT and Technology (#3) industries, the remaining Top 5 most mature industries globally are the highly-regulated Financial Services (#1), Life Sciences (#2), Healthcare (#4) and Public Sector (#5).