Most organisations in Ireland have lost data at some point and some never recover it at all, according to a poll of almost 200 senior IT decision-makers.

The survey found 93 per cent of Irish businesses had lost data at some stage, while 13 per cent never recovered any of it.

Meanwhile, the volume of digital information continues to grow. Data stored in Irish organisations increased by 42 per cent in the past year.

Most organisations have issues with losing data, whether by accident or malicious intent, so the more pressing concern is whether or not that data can be recovered.

Almost half of respondents (49 per cent) said their organisation could not recover some of the data that had been lost while 20 per cent said more than half of their data was permanently irretrievable.

In 13 per cent of cases, lost data was never recovered at all. On average, Irish organisations face a wait of 45.6 hours to retrieve mission-critical data when lost and 60 per cent of respondents said it took longer than expected to recover the data when it was needed.

Old technology

The findings were published in a paper by IT services provider

Datapac

and were based on a survey of 192 senior IT professionals in the private and public sectors, carried out by

TechPro

magazine.

Other findings showed many organisations fell short by using older technology, such as backup tapes or disks, by storing data in insecure locations or by not having documented processes in place.

More than one in five respondents said they stored backup data in an insecure location and one in four said they had never tested their ability to recover data in the event of a loss.

Rob Corbet, partner and head of technology and innovation at legal firm Arthur Cox, said: "It is slowly starting to dawn on companies that data loss is an inevitable fact of business life."

Mr Corbet said businesses often failed to prepare for data security whereas they planned in advance for other unavoidable challenges such as death or taxes with succession planning or management accounts. This failure to prepare was partly due to a lack of accountability for data, he said.

“Some organisations will view it solely as an IT issue while others view it as a compliance obligation,” he said.