Disaster Recovery plans not up to scratch - VNUNET.COM
Most UK firms have a false sense of security when it
comes to their disaster recovery strategy, the Department
of Trade and Industry (DTI) has warned.
Although 95 per cent of UK companies have some form
of back-up facilities in place, a third of them store
back-up tapes on site, while less than 20 per cent
back up desktops.
And only eight per cent of companies have actually
tested their disaster recovery plans.
These are the initial findings from the 2004 edition
of the DTI's biennial Information Security Breaches
Survey, carried out by a consortium led by consultant
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
The survey spoke to 1,000 UK companies, with a particular
emphasis this year on back-up and recovery, explained
Chris Potter, the PwC partner overseeing the project.
Two-thirds of of the survey's respondents had suffered
an incident over the last year that required data
to be restored from back-up, so it was no surprise
that 88 per cent of respondents said they found it
easy or very easy to justify the cost of back-up and
recovery.
The full report will be published in April.
Michael Warren, channel director of online back-up
software vendor Attix5, said that, for SMEs at least,
"testing your disaster recovery strategy may
in itself be a risky business".
But he added that he took heart from the fact that
the survey reveals a trend, albeit gradual, for a
growth in automatic back-up.
Around 78 per cent of big businesses are doing this
with their servers, although fewer than half of smaller
companies are doing the same.
