In the past few years, information security has grown from a peripheral consideration that only concerned large organisations and government entities, to a tangible threat that every business must consider. As the following statistics reveal, online security isn’t an issue that will fade away, and it’s likely to become increasingly important in years to come.

1. In the last three years, more information has been created in the world than any other time in the human race.

2. In 2016, there were already more things that were connected to the World Wide Web than there were individuals. By the end of 2017, it is estimated that more than 50 billion items will be connected to the web.

3. Data continues to grow faster than ever before. In three years’ time, around 1.7 MB of new data will get created every second, for each human being in the world.

4. By 2020, the accumulated digital universe of data will increase from 4.4 megabytes as it stands today to more than 44 trillion.

5. More than 40 thousand queries are made on Google Search every second.

6. As of August 2017, more than one billion people have accessed Facebook on any given day.

7. This year has seen Facebook users send more than 31.25 million messages per minute. Videos have had a viewership of 2.77 million views per minute.

8. 2017 has seen a massive growth of photo and video data. Per minute, more than 300 hours of video have been uploaded to YouTube alone.

9. In 2016, a staggering one trillion photos were taken, and billions of them shared online. This year, 80% of the photos were taken using smartphones.

10. Over 1.4 billion smartphones have been manufactured and shipped this year. All of them have been packed with sensors and applications that can collect all types of data, some which is created without the knowledge of the user.

11. It is estimated that by the end of the year, there will be more than 3.1 billion smartphone users globally.

12. In the next few years, there will be more than 50 billion smart connected devices globally, which will have been developed to collect, analyse, and share data.

13. By next year, a third of all data will be passing through the cloud

14. Google uses more than a thousand computers to answer a single query, taking less than 0.2 seconds to provide an answer.

15. The Hadoop has been approximated to grow at 58% by next year and will surpass one billion dollars by 2019.

16. Information security experts estimate that by integrating big data, governments could end up saving as much as 300 billion dollars a year.

17. In the US, the White House has invested more than 200 million dollars in information security and big data.

18. A typical Fortune 1000 company that has invested in information security has earned more than 65 million dollars from a 10% investment.

19. Retailers and wholesalers who choose to leverage the power of information security can increase their profit margins by 60%.

20. 73% of organisations globally have already invested in information security systems.

So what do these statistics mean for the information security of the average Australian business? To learn more about the threats facing your company, download our Information Security and Australian Businesses whitepaper below: