Mumbai, Feb 22 (IANS): Nearly 89 per cent of organisations globally are not protecting data sufficiently and 88 per cent of IT leaders expect data protection budgets to rise at a higher rate than broader IT spending as data becomes more critical to business success, a new report showed on Tuesday.

Nearly 67 per cent of businesses are turning to cloud-based solutions to protect their data, while the ability to recover data from ransomware attacks continue to drive business continuity strategies, according to the report by Veeam Software.

"Data growth over the past two years has more than doubled, in no small part to how we have embraced remote working and cloud-based services and so forth," said Anand Eswaran, Chief Executive Officer at Veeam.

"As data volumes have exploded, so too have the risks associated with data protection; ransomware being a prime example. This research shows that organizations recognize these challenges and are investing heavily, often due to having fallen short in delivering the protection users need, he added.

The report surveyed more than 3,000 IT decision makers and global enterprises to understand their data protection strategies for the next 12 months and beyond.

For the second year in a row, cyber-attacks have been the single biggest cause of downtime, with 76 per cent of organisations reporting at least one ransomware event in the past 12 months.

Per attack, organizations were unable to recover 36 per cent of their lost data, proving that data protection strategies are currently failing to help businesses prevent, remediate and recover from ransomware attacks.

"As cyberattacks become increasingly sophisticated and even more difficult to prevent, backup and recovery solutions are essential foundations of any organization's Modern Data Protection strategy," said Danny Allan, CTO at Veeam.