Cobalt Iron Inc., a leading provider of SaaS-based enterprise data protection, announced the availability of its free Data Protection Maturity Assessment created in partnership with independent data center analyst DCIG. The assessment is an online survey that enables respondents to evaluate the maturity of their enterprise data protection and compare it to similar companies — all in an effort to improve their data security.

Data Protection Maturity Assessment users simply go to the Cobalt Iron website and answer questions about their organization’s data protection. The survey takes less than five minutes. Respondents are benchmarked against their peers and get immediate feedback on their answers — including a score, comparisons to other answers, action items for improvement, and a PDF Benchmark Report to share. In the comparison, respondents see how their organization’s data protection maturity measures up against their peers in three categories: the same industry, the same number of employees, and the same company revenue.

Data protection maturity levels are outlined as Developing, Defined, Managed, and Optimized, with each level indicating an increase in maturity and controls in data protection standards.

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Before this tool became available, chief information officers, chief information security officers, backup and security administrators, and others used their own judgement to determine how well their data was protected and if they were keeping up with data protection industry standards. Companies also hired expensive consultants to conduct a discovery and assessment project on their data protection. The Cobalt Iron Data Protection Maturity Assessment eliminates the need for those imprecise or expensive assessment methods while providing an industry-standard data protection maturity ranking and actions for improvement.

The survey questions reflect Cobalt Iron’s years of enterprise-level best practices in data protection and DCIG’s third-party analysis of enterprise cloud, data protection, and data storage technologies. The two companies worked together to create a questionnaire that will help organizations assess the maturity of their data protection posture.

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“As analysts in this space, we get an in-depth look at all the best ways enterprises are protecting their precious data — and what they could be doing better,” said Jerome Wendt, president and founder, DCIG. “In cooperation with Cobalt Iron, we’re taking that first-hand knowledge and pouring it into questions designed to get people thinking about how to fill all the holes in their organization’s data security environment.”

Organizations may retake the benchmark at any time, and as many times as they want, to see how their score has improved.

“We’ve teamed up with industry analysts at DCIG on the Data Protection Maturity Assessment and Benchmark Report to educate people across industries and technologies about data protection standards. This free benchmark assesses your organization’s maturity level in data protection and compares it to your peers,” said Andy Hurt, Cobalt Iron’s chief marketing officer. “We hope everyone with a stake in keeping data safe takes advantage of this free tool to improve data protection at their organization.”