Research carried out by Eurostat has outlined the way in which data loss impacted businesses in 2010 and the means by which companies were negatively affected over the past 12 months.

Six per cent of businesses in Europe have been the victims of a data security breach, according to the organisation, with a majority of this attributable to malware and a portion due to direct attacks by third parties, often leveraged via malicious software.

Twelve per cent of businesses were impacted by data loss as a result of faulty hardware, although the UK fares better than many of its European contemporaries in categories like this. The failure of hardware, which causes downtime, is identified in the statistics as being twice as likely to cause data loss as a deliberate, direct attack.

While 20 per cent of businesses in Slovakia were infected with malware this year, in the UK just two per cent of firms were hit, according to the report.

In countries like Italy and Ireland most firms rely largely on superior passwords to keep their data safe and limit access, although even in particularly secure regions it is impossible to completely rule out data loss, particularly when human error is a factor.

Many experts warn about the dangers of lax security as a result of weak password choice and 2010 has seen several surveys showing just how easy it can be for cybercriminals to crack an account using brute force alone. Here the UK lags behind some of its neighbours, although it is still ahead of most eastern European nations, according to Eurostat.

Although the UK is relatively secure it is clear that data recovery requires planning for the disasters which might otherwise leave a business incapacitated and result in inevitable, costly downtime.

Relying on in-house technology which can be expensive to maintain and difficult to fix in the event of a fault, is not seen as efficient by many UK firms, resulting in a push towards cloud computing in the public and private sectors.

According to experts, many businesses and organisations are believed to be taking the threat of data loss and the requirements of data security more seriously. This is as a result of high profile scandals involving personal information being compromised which are continually made public, engendering adverse reactions.

An Irish newspaper has published data that suggests businesses there are reacting far quicker to the threat of data loss than would be suggested by the global average. According to the Irish Times, nearly 54 per cent of companies in Ireland were in the process of strengthening their defences or initiating a data protection scheme in order to address the most common causes of data loss.

In a global survey carried out by Ernst & Young, which took on board the comments and opinions of over 1800 executives, 70 per cent of managers in the UK and Ireland expressed concerns about the security of data within their businesses. It also emerged that a growing number were considering the measures that would need to be taken in order to protect them from both internal and external attacks.

Mike Harris, speaking for Ernst & Young, said that attitudes were changing quickly around the UK as a result of more than a year of serious data loss incidences, involving hacking, laptop theft and portable storage loss. The pressure of facing the media after a security breach and the enduring effects of any scandal, are generating significant support for change and improvement within a majority of businesses.

Despite the economic downturn and a growing culture of cost-cutting, the report also found that most IT departments were retaining their current security budgets at a consistent level. This suggests that more businesses are seeing data protection as an essential commodity rather than an unnecessary luxury.

Some believe that despite the frequent occurrence of data loss, the problems facing businesses can be solved if they act on the examples set by others, both positively and negatively, to avoid the same fate.