Only a third of businesses have complete confidence in their disaster recovery capabilities, according to insight from Databarracks. Just 35% of respondents to the company’s annual Data Health Check survey have full confidence in their plans, while just 49% have complete confidence in their current back-up solution.
Now in its 11th year, the survey questioned over 400 IT decision-makers in the UK on a series of critical issues relating to IT, security, disaster recovery and business continuity practices. Some 53% said they are fairly confident, while 8% have “concerns”.
Peter Groucutt, managing director at Databarracks, expressed concern over the lack of progress in disaster recovery and back-up over the past year, at the same time as cyber threats have continued to grow.
“Organisations are lacking something in terms of disaster recovery strategy, and the policies, procedures and technology needed to execute this strategy. It’s hard to function confidently as a business if you’re unsure of how well you’d cope if disaster struck – whether that’s cyber-related or something else like a power outage.”
The survey also found that 23% of respondents do not have offsite back-ups; 13% never test back-ups; 42% have not tested disaster recovery processes in the last 12 months; 24% of respondents said their biggest worry in a disaster is lost revenue, and 17% cited reputational damage.
Groucutt added: “Frequent testing and having offsite copies of data should be crucial pillars of any disaster recovery and business continuity strategy. This doesn’t need to be expensive or difficult – it’s simply a case of taking the right steps to improve resilience.”
“Find ways to make testing part of your day-to-day operations. If there is a public transport strike, test your remote working practices. Whenever you need to make updates to IT systems, test back-ups. Exercise these processes on a consistent basis, and staff and the business will always be ready to act when an incident does strike.”
“Conduct a business impact analysis. Determine the potential effects of disruption to critical business operations. Decide what is important for your business and how you might be affected if something happened to your people, premises, IT or suppliers. Then, put plans and workarounds in place to keep you operational.”
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