In APAC, even workers trained in cloud collaboration continued to assume that cloud vendors were responsible for total data protection: study.

In a study involving 11,500 office workers in Australia, China, France, Germany, Singapore, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States regarding cloud adoption, some aspects of data loss stood out as hindrances to successful digitalization.

The researchers indicated that workers’ fears of reprisals after losing data could dilute the success of cloud adoption, and that businesses in the study were losing critical data such as customer orders and financial data because office workers in the study were “too scared” or “too embarrassed” to report data loss or ransomware issues when using cloud applications.

In the Asia Pacific region (APAC), the researchers noted three trends in the sample groups:

  1. Data loss had a big impact on employee well-being
    • In Australia, 43.4% of respondents had tried to recreate deleted documents from memory, a time-consuming endeavor that potentially led to more stress, and 33.9% had deferred to their IT department for help.
    • In China, 70.2% of respondents had cited trying to recreate deleted documents from memory; another 54.8% had deferred to their IT department for help.
    • In Singapore, 49% of respondents had tried to recreate deleted documents from memory, with 18% citing strong emotional reactions such as swearing, 13% citing lashing out and breaking something, and 14% citing crying.
    • In South Korea, 62.4% of respondents had tried to recreate deleted documents from memory while 16% shrugged the matter off. Strong emotional reactions due to this data loss included swearing (17%) and crying (15.7%).
  2. Respondents were still losing critical business information despite having been trained
    • In Australia, 83.3% of office workers in the study had received specific training, but 42.9% continued to save their documents on their own desktop/computer; 50.4% had accidentally deleted data from cloud apps, and a further 92.1% expected to get a deleted file/folder back.
    • In China, 83.4% of respondents had received specific training on where to save business files, but 48% continued to save their documents on their own desktop/ computer. Also, 74.2% of China office workers in the study had accidentally deleted data from cloud apps; 65.1% thought data in the cloud was safer from ransomware in comparison to data stored on a computer/ server in their own office because they assumed their cloud providers were protecting it from malware.
    • In Singapore, 81% of respondents had received specific training on where to save business files, but 46%continued to save their documents on their own desktop/ computer. Also, 57% of respondents who were office workers had accidentally deleted data from cloud apps. Finally, 44% of respondents thought data in the cloud was safer from ransomware in comparison to data stored on a computer/server in their own office because they assumed their cloud providers were protecting it from malware.
    • In South Korea, 92.2% of respondents had received specific training on where to save business files, but 48% continued to save their documents on their own desktop/computer. Some 60.6% of them had accidentally deleted data from cloud apps; 51.6% thought data in the cloud was from ransomware in comparison to data stored on a computer/server in their own office because they assumed their cloud providers were protecting it from malware.
  3. Various mindsets were preventing workers from owning up when they caused data to be lost from cloud applications
    • In Australia, 25.7% of respondents were ashamed to own up; 21.6% did not know who to tell, and a further 18.9% did not think it was important to tell anyone.
    • In China, 32.7% of respondents were ashamed to own up, 19.1% did not know who to tell, and a further 28.4% did not think it was important to tell anyone.
    • In Singapore, 26% of respondents were ashamed to own up; 28% did not know who to tell, and a further 24% did not think it was important to tell anyone.
    • In South Korea, 28.9% were ashamed to own up, 31.1% were scared of the consequences, and a further 22.2% did not think anyone would know they were responsible for the data loss.

As far as this research was concerned, losing work-related data or introducing ransomware were two of the most stressful experiences for respondents—more stressful than “a first date”, “a job interview” or “sitting for an exam”.

According to Andy Ng, Vice President and Managing Director (Asia South and Pacific Region), Veritas Technologies, which commissioned the study: “Businesses need to help, not blame, employees when data is lost or encrypted by hackers as a result of employee action. Leaders need to motivate employees to come forward as soon as possible so that IT teams can respond quickly to take remedial action, given that there’s often a short window to minimize the impact of deleting or corrupting the cloud-based data,” and that shaming and punishment were not ideal ways to react to the mistakes. 

Ng provide some observations of the sample groups in the study:

  • The Cloud gives had given false confidence to the affected respondents. Employees in the study did not have a clear understanding of how much help the cloud companies hosting their files would be in the event that their data was lost. This is a misconception that will continue to put businesses at risk until it is thoroughly debunked.
  • As part of their standard service, most cloud providers only provide guarantee of service, but the onus of data protection fell on the corporate customers. Storing data in the cloud does not automatically make it safe, it still requires strong data protection.
  • The mindset behind handling a data loss incident loss had impacted employee well-being in terms of resorting to the use of profanity, lashing out, “breaking something” and “crying”. Many of the respondents affected had believed it is going to be easy to get data back from the company providing their cloud service.
  • Organizations need to make it easy for workers to restore lost files: deploying a comprehensive backup and protection strategy in the cloud is superior to punitive measures and any kind of negative reinforcement measures.

Ng reiterated that is every organization’s responsibility to protect its own data, whether in the cloud or stored on their own devices.