French companies that are more digital but also more vulnerable

In most companies, the health crisis has resulted in an acceleration of digital transformation. This digitalization, often carried out in a hurry, without the usual precautions and safeguards, nevertheless exposes organizations to increased IT risks. A study conducted by Vanson Bourne for Veritas sought to assess the level of risk resulting from this rapid digitalization, interviewing more than 2,000 IT decision-makers in around twenty countries. In France, French companies have not been spared by unforeseen service disruptions: 82% of them have experienced such interruptions during the past year (compared to 88% globally), for a total period of time. 8 hour average. French respondents appear to be more resilient to threats, however, having experienced fewer incidents than the global average, whether it be ransomware attacks, cloud service outages or network and data center issues. French organizations must nevertheless address certain issues, particularly related to their accelerated shift to the cloud.

According to the study, over the past year 58% of French companies surveyed have added five or more cloud services to their portfolio, catching up with other countries. For the coming year, French decision-makers plan to have more than half (54%) of their applications, data and infrastructure in the cloud (public or private), the global average being at 58%. However, this rapid change worries French respondents: when asked about the gaps to be filled in their technological strategy after the pandemic, they place cloud technologies in the lead, cited by 52% of them, ahead of security (46%). French decision-makers are also more concerned with issues of resilience and recovery after incidents, mentioned by 44% of them (compared to 40% globally).

Shadow IT et dark data

The majority (76%) of French decision-makers believe that these various issues cannot be resolved by the end of 2021. On average, they estimate that they will need 24 full-time work equivalents to meet them, with an investment estimated at $ 2.88 million over the next 12 months (compared to the world average of 2.47). Among the problems to be addressed is visibility on cloud services, even if French respondents are doing better than average: 67% of them are indeed able to say exactly how many cloud services their company uses, against 58% at the global level. Another major subject concerns the categorization of data: only 66% of the information kept by French companies has been classified and tagged, which leaves a substantial part of “dark data” escaping governance, conservation and archiving policies.