80% of IT professionals believe more stringent data protection regulations will benefit their organisations, but only 20% are confident that they comply with the latest regulatory requirements. 

These are the findings of a recent survey from Commvault, conducted at Data Protection World Forum 2018 in London.

The results highlighted that while four in five data experts and IT professionals believe that the requirement to comply with stronger, more stringent data management regulations (like GDPR), will be a long-term benefit to their organisations, only one in five were fully confident in their business’ level of compliance with current data protection legislation. 

The poll, conducted last November, collected the views of data protection and IT experts on the current state of the regulatory environment regarding data protection and privacy legislation.

Almost two thirds of respondents (64%) felt the changing business processes and cultural requirements necessary for the uptake of genuinely compliant data-centric practices across organisations were greater barriers than the technology issues.

This is despite the fact that technology challenges such as cloud migration, integrating with legacy systems and managing unstructured data were still areas of concern.

Despite this, four in ten respondents (37%) stated that they would welcome more data regulation. More regulation and enforcement could result in better data management practices being implemented in their organisations in the long term.

Meanwhile, nearly one in five respondents (17%) said that the penalties for falling foul of current regulatory policy were still not strict enough. This means that the regulation might need to be stricter to drive the organisational changes required to recognise the real business value potential.

“With many businesses still struggling to navigate the challenges of data protection regulations like GDPR, it’s never been more important than it is today, to focus on the core principles of effective data management, beyond simply a tech perspective, but to also include cultural and process elements too,” explained Jo Blazey, global data governance officer, Commvault.

“Every benefit you can gain from data tracks back to four simple premises: being able to see what data you have, where it’s stored, how it’s protected and what it’s being used for.”

“Compliance with current regulations requires changes in business and working cultural behaviours to achieve this but let’s be clear, better data management is as much a business or legal priority, as it is a technology one,” Blazey finished.