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MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 01/10/13 -- Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) today announced the findings of its 2012 Information Retention and eDiscovery Survey which examined how enterprises manage their ever-growing volumes of electronically stored information (ESI) and prepare for the eventuality of an eDiscovery request. The study found the percentage of organizations without a formal information retention plan dropped by half from the 2011 survey. However, even with this improvement, organizations struggle with implementing their information retention plans as only a third of organizations report their plan is fully operational.

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Non-implemented plans risky to organizations
Nearly two-thirds (60 percent) of organizations say they have a formal retention plan, yet only 34 percent report those plans are fully operational. The perceived cost of implementing their plans is reported to be the most common reason why organizations are lagging in plan implementation. The survey found that only 7 percent of organizations don't have any plans in place, a 50 percent drop from 14 percent of organizations reported in the 2011 survey.

Even more concerning is that while they received on average 17 requests for electronically stored information, these requests failed 31 percent of the time. This is significantly higher than the 20 percent of failures reported in 2011. Each time a failure occurs, the organization is at risk. Forty-three percent reported the inability to make decisions in a timely fashion as the biggest consequence of these failures. Other consequences reported include damage to reputation, compromised legal position, fines, raised profile as a litigation target and court sanctions.

"The survey highlights that, although there is a reduction in the number of organizations without an information retention plan, organizations haven't fully funded and implemented their plans," said Trevor Daughney, Director, Information Intelligence Group, Symantec. "With the number of ESI requests and failures to obtain requested information increasing, organizations face risks that are much more costly in the long run than implementing their plans."

No improvement in gap between retention beliefs & practices
There is still a substantial gap between beliefs and practices in retention policies, which has not significantly changed year over year. Eighty-one percent of respondents believe that a proper information retention plan allows organizations to delete information on an ongoing basis. However, 42 percent of backups are indefinitely retained by organizations. This is virtually unchanged from the 2011 results. And, information that is deleted by organizations is often deleted without considering established retention policies.