The data protection risk environment could be easily represented by an arrow pointing up. Up as in 90% of organizations have experienced some form of disruption in the past 12 months, and the average cost of a cyberattack has more than doubled, from 2022 to 2023.

These are just two data points provided by Dell Technologies Inc. in its recently released 2024 “Global Data Protection Index” report. Ahead of theCUBE’s coverage of Dell’s launch event, titled “Building Cyber Resilience on Trusted Data Protection Infrastructure,” on April 30, SiliconANGLE is further exploring cybersecurity trends, including key findings from Dell’s report. (* Disclosure below.)

Commissioned through Vanson Bourne using a survey of 1,500 IT and IT security decision-makers globally, the report shows that navigating the tricky dynamics of data protection remains a significant challenge as organizations around the world grapple with the threat of cyberattacks and the risks inherent in safeguarding hybrid compute environments.

“There’s a significant asymmetry between the offense and the defense,” said John Scimone, president and chief security officer at Dell, in a recent interview with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. “The defense is losing broadly if you look at the scoreboard, and that hasn’t changed over the last decade.”

Dell data protection report charts financial impact

The reality is that data loss events are taking a financial toll. Dell’s Index report showed that the average cost to organizations climbed to $2.61 million in the past 12 months. Over half of IT decision-makers indicated that a cyberattack or incident prevented access to data, which can have far-reaching impact on a business and its financial health. The average amount of unplanned system downtime was reported to be 26 hours.

Statistics such as these highlight the urgency felt by organizations to address cybersecurity challenges. Recent headlines, such as the “near miss” of a cataclysmic breach when a Microsoft engineer alertly discovered malicious code in key software for running the Linux operating system, continue to fuel concerns.

“Inherently, it’s a question of prioritization,” Scimone said. “What’s the next most urgent priority, thinking through those priorities, not just necessarily taking a playbook of best practices off the shelf from a website or an advisory agency, but actually deeply understanding your business, your organization model.”

Interestingly, the survey showed that zero trust is not yet one of the best practices being fully embraced by IT security decision-makers. Only 8% of respondents indicated that their organizations had fully implemented a zero-trust security architecture, although over 40% were either in the planning phase or actively deploying zero-trust capabilities.

Mixed sentiment for AI and security

High on the list of topics of interest to cybersecurity experts is the deployment of generative artificial intelligence. As the technology has risen in popularity over the past 18 months, so have opinions on whether it will help or hinder data protection. Dell’s survey found that barely half of respondents, 52%, believe that integrating generative AI will provide an advantage to an organization’s overall cybersecurity posture. While 88% agreed that generative AI adoption will create large volumes of new data, the same percentage also agreed that the resulting higher value of information will demand greater protection service levels.

These findings illustrate how IT executives are mixed when it comes to gen AI. It can be a powerful defensive asset, but it can also create a new host of complexities for organizations to manage. Then there is the prospect that malicious actors will leverage generative AI to wreak new havoc on IT systems.

“Generative AI and large language models are an amazing revolution,” said Gil Hecht, founder and chief executive officer of Continuity Inc., during an interview on theCUBE in December. “We all integrate it into our products, but specifically in the security world, it’s an unbelievable huge threat. I think if we thought that security is important until now, security is going to be 10 times or 20 times more important.”

Ransomware continues to plague organizations

Ransomware continues to be a significant issue within the security world. In fact, in the Index survey, 85% of responding organizations reported paying a ransom over the past 12 months to regain control of their data. The report also shed new light on the current state of the ransomware insurance industry. While 93% of respondents had policies in place, the insurance came with numerous caveats that could limit protection in many instances. These included a need to prove best practice cyberthreat prevention activity, limits on how much would be paid for a claim and certain scenarios that would void payment under terms of the policy entirely.

Threat activity in 2023 also featured remarkable hubris on the part of ransomware gangs. The ALPHV/BlackCat ransomware group filed a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission complaint in November charging one of its victims with failure to comply with the SEC’s four-day disclosure rule following a breach. Dell’s report and activity over the past year underscored the continued headaches associated with ransomware attacks.

“One of the things that the survey keeps telling us is that customers just haven’t arrived at their destination yet,” said Rob Emsley, director of data protection marketing at Dell, during theCUBE’s most recent Cyber Resiliency Summit. “They’re still staying awake at night, worried about how to bring the business back after a ransomware attack or a cyberattack.”

Remote work raises threat exposure

In the aftermath of a global COVID-19 pandemic, much of the world continues to work remotely. According to data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, the share of paid “work from home days” remained steady at 28% in 2023 versus 7% pre-pandemic. This significant change in work habits has become a challenge. Despite the continued popularity of remote and hybrid working, there is a growing belief among organizations that this is increasing exposure to data loss from cyberattacks.

Dell’s Index report noted that respondents seeing increased exposure grew from 70% to 81% over the past year, accompanied by rising concern that protection measures may not be sufficient to cope with expanded threats. This will require a renewed focus on how network access will be structured for remote users, with a complete evaluation of every element in the IT stack.

“If I’m a user with a laptop and I’m coming in, what applications do I access? Where do they sit? How do I traverse the network, and how do I protect every piece of it?” said Arun Krishnamoorthy, senior director of cybersecurity product management at Dell, in an interview with SiliconANGLE. “There is the technology stack, and we want to make sure that every piece of that is protected.”

Multicloud presents cybersecurity challenges

While adoption of multicloud models has emerged as the preferred path in IT organizations, it has also led to a growing lack of confidence in the ability to make this structure secure. The Index report noted that 82% of respondents were “not very confident” about their ability to protect all data across public cloud environments. Nearly all, 96%, confirmed experiencing challenges in just managing data within public, multicloud networks.

Findings such as these point toward the challenges facing cybersecurity experts in 2024. They must be able to protect multi-workload environments while ensuring robust security for hybrid operations. This will require making tough choices, understanding all of the elements inside a complex IT infrastructure and then focusing on the most critical needs to protect data and keep businesses running. Dell’s message in this regard is simple: Focus on data protection and recovery readiness, because the threat landscape isn’t getting any better.

“The difference between survival and just a bad day for many businesses may be whether you can bring an entire business worth of data back online in the course of days versus weeks or months depending on the level of preparedness,” Scimone said. “Almost everything we’re communicating about is through the lens of how we’re protecting our company and how we’re protecting our customers, which at the end of the day is the thing that we all collectively care about and can rally behind.”

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Dell launch event on April 30. No sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Image: SvetaZi from Getty Images Pro