More than a quarter of UK companies do not have
adisaster recoveryplan in place,
according to the 2008information security breachessurvey.
That is despite the fact that 92% of businesses say they
consider disaster recovery planning an important driver of their IT
expenditure, and 58% say they would suffer significant business
disruption if their IT systems were unavailable for just one
day.
However, the survey reveals an increase in the adoption of
disaster recovery plans, with 72% saying they had a plan in place,
up from 58% two years ago.
The survey, conducted on behalf of the Department of Business,
Enterprise & Regulatory Reform, also showed that half the
companies that had disaster recovery plans fail to test them.
Although 99% of companies back up critical systems and data, 15%
of small and medium companies and 9% of large companies do not take
their back-ups off site.
Chris Potter, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, who led the
survey, said, "The number of companies with a disaster recovery
plan has gone up. However, experience shows that plans are only
effective if regularly tested. It is a concern that only half of
plans have been tested in the last year."
The full results of the survey will be unveiled at the
www.infosec.co.uk Infosecurity Europe event in London, which will
be held from 22 to 24 April.