As data becomes more valuable to running the modern business, its loss has gone up in price too.

That’s one of several key findings contained in the latest “Global Data Protection Index” released by Dell EMC. The report, which surveyed 2,200 global information technology decision makers worldwide, found that the average estimated total cost of 20 hours of unplanned system downtime amounted to $526,845, while 2.13 terabytes of complete data loss equated to a $995,613 bill.

“Data matters and more and more people are realizing that,” said Beth Phalen (pictured), president and general manager of the Data Protection Division at Dell EMC. “As the threats are maturing, the need for being able to protect our companies from those threats needs to mature as well.”

Phalen spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Boston, Massachusetts. They discussed the key findings found in the report and how companies are dealing with challenges in data protection (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Multi-vendor raises chance of disruption

In addition to the cost of downtime or loss, the Dell EMC study showed that more than three-fourth of respondents had multiple data protection vendors, making them 35 percent more likely to experience disruption. And the impact of disruptions is increasing as well, with 25 percent reporting delay in getting products and services to market versus only 14 percent two years ago.

Not surprisingly, interest and knowledge in data protection have grown with the impact. “We found that the number of adopters, people who were fully immersed in data protection, went from 9 percent to 57 percent,” Phalen said. “That was a really big jump.”

Data protection challenges remain, with the vast majority — 95 percent — reporting at least one hurdle confronting them. The top three challenges noted in the report were the ballooning cost of storage and backup, lack of protections for emerging tech, and ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations.

“We really are seeing a massive shift in the number of companies that are now focused on data protection as a core part of their IT strategy,” Phalen noted. “We’re building our strategy on real data like this survey.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations. (* Disclosure: Dell EMC sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell EMC nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE