Poor management of data harms businesses' ability to gain value from it

Less than 40 percent of companies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are confident they can manage, secure and gain insight from data, and use it responsibly according to new research from Oracle.

The study finds that on average 42 percent of respondents do not have a data management strategy in place. Only 35 percent are highly confident they can manage data to generate meaningful insights, and key departments are still not accepting both accountability and responsibility for data management. In addition data security protocols are often not understood, or followed.

"We know that being able to leverage data gives immense business benefit and a lead that others find hard to diminish," says Andrew Sutherland, senior vice president, technology and systems at Oracle APAC and EMEA. "But these findings suggest that organizations are still being overwhelmed by the data deluge faced. Companies need to tackle the problem head on. This will come from better internal practices and putting data management strategies and enhanced security controls in place. Additionally, the prudent use of cloud and emerging technologies like AI and automation will also be key as we hit that tipping point where the data and security challenge is becoming just too big for humans alone."

While 53 percent of EMEA leaders surveyed believe that the secure management of data is very important to reputational risk, the study shows there are many key internal behaviors that compromise trust. A quarter say that the biggest concern around data security inside the organization is low attention to data confidentiality, followed by weak controls on who can access data (24 percent), a willingness to manage data through mobile devices or social platforms (23 percent), and use of untrusted devices and connections (23 percent).

Around a fifth of respondents (22 percent) also say that top behaviors affecting their trust in how data is managed include: blindness on how data is supposed to be used; the misuse of critical data; and disregard for applicable data regulations.

The study does show that organizations are turning to technology for help with data mastery. Measures include accelerating the move to cloud for enhanced security performance (30 percent), turning to AI and machine learning to drive actionable insights from data (26 percent), and machine learning capabilities to self-patch and secure data (25 percent).

The full report can be downloaded from the Oracle site.

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