Only 35% of companies test theirdisaster recovery plansat least once
a year, according to research by security companySymantec
.
Companies blamed the potential disruption to customers and
employees and a lack of resources, time and budget for failing to
test their recovery plans more often.
Disaster recovery budgets are higher in 2009, the study showed.
They are expected to remain flat over the next few years, requiring
IT professionals to achieve more with the same or fewer
resources.
The average cost of executing and implementing disaster recovery
plans for each downtime incident worldwide is $287,600. One in four
plans failed after testing, and 93% of organisations had to change
their disaster recovery plans following trials.
Darren Thomson, senior technical director at Symantec, said: "We
are troubled that some areas – including the impact of testing on
customers and the backing up of virtual environments – have not
improved or have even worsened."
| Recommendations |
|---|
| Reduce the costs of downtime by using automation tools and
address other weaknesses in disaster recovery plans. |
| Organisations should improve their testing success rate by
evaluating and implementing scenarios which do not disrupt the
business |
| Organisations should include people responsible for
virtualisation in their disaster recovery plans, especially in
testing and backup initiatives.
Virtual environments should be treated in the same way as
physical servers. |