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03 Apr 2008
UK businesses are more vulnerable to a disastrous loss of IT systems than ever before, according to a new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The survey found that 58 per cent of UK businesses would suffer significant business disruption if their IT systems were not available for one day.
PwC said that this is the highest percentage since the surveys began, and that the figure is as high as 70 per cent for larger companies.
"There has been an explosion of information within businesses," said Martin Sadler, director of the Systems Security Lab at HP Labs Bristol.
"Acquiring, analysing and delivering the right information to people so they can act on it is a major challenge for companies.
"The volume of data, and companies' dependence on it, poses significant backup challenges."
The survey found that 28 per cent of companies still do not have a disaster recovery plan, despite 92 per cent of respondents describing it as an 'important IT issue'.
Half of those companies that do have a plan have not tested it, making the probability of failure much higher.
The survey did have some good news, however. Critical data was backed up by 99 per cent of companies and 86 per cent do this on a daily basis.
Some 85 per cent of the companies that do back-up critical data take those backups offsite (up from 76 per cent two years ago), which is crucial if a key business is destroyed.
Chris Potter, a partner at PwC, said: "It is encouraging to see that almost every UK business makes backups, and the vast majority now take these backups off-site. The risks are well understood, and it does not take an incident to raise awareness.
"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 past year."
London is no longer the leader in disaster recovery planning, according to the survey results.
Businesses in the South West now make more disaster recovery plans than anywhere else in the country, possibly because of last year's flooding.
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Business continuity with a different approace
Using backup software which is embedded in OS is a good idea when you are sure about your hardware. Major data lost occur due to hard disk failure or controller failure. In this case, you wont be able to retrieve from your hard disk and basically you will lose all your data unless you have done off site backup.
Posted by: vshah 09 Apr 2008
Wise disaster recovery investment is key to business continuity
Growing risk awareness and an increasingly dangerous business environment may have prompted more companies to invest in disaster recovery (DR) as part of the business continuity programme - but how safe is that investment? Just what, indeed, is being recovered? Few organisations have any real insight into the true extent of their IT assets. Not only does this challenge the validity of the DR solution but it also raises huge questions in the event of an insurance claim. For most companies, one of the major issues is the complete lack of co-ordination between the asset register recorded within finance and the inventory lists used within the IT department to determine system maintenance and support. Any inconsistency between the asset register held within finance and other inventory records in the business will raise significant doubt for insurance companies, delaying payment at best. At worst an organisation could lose any chance of an insurance pay-out, even face charges of claiming for non existent items. However, there are simple processes that can be followed to ensure greater information consistency. A central repository that records the serial number and asset location, as well as the value of each item, will meet the needs of all departments from finance to IT. Critically, this ensures that reliable, accurate information is available for both insurance and DR planning, reducing business risk whilst also giving companies more confidence in their business continuity investments. Yours sincerely Karen Conneely
Posted by: Karen Conneely 04 Apr 2008