UK still ill-prepared for disaster

The UK's small firms are doing little to protect business-critical IT systems

One year on from the worst floods in living memory, six out of 10 UK companies have done nothing to protect business-critical IT systems, according to research released this week.

The floods, which engulfed large parts of the UK throughout July 2007, affected more than 30,000 businesses and cost the UK billions of pounds in lost sales, employee productivity and capital cost of goods.

A survey conducted by business ISP Star found that three-quarters of businesses claim to have created a plan to help them reduce the impact of major events.

But the majority have not taken any precaution to protect one of their most valuable resources - IT.

Fewer than four in 10 companies surveyed had taken any steps to safeguard IT systems in order to keep e-commerce sites up and running, protect mail servers, facilitate remote working, or ensure that staff had access to critical applications in the event of another major incident.

Many are also ill-prepared to deal with smaller, but often equally damaging, events such as power outages, malicious attacks on corporate networks or hardware failure.

"Last year's floods gave small firms an insight into what can happen and the challenges they face with regard to business continuity implementation and management," said James Griffin, head of hosting strategy at Star.

"Some lessons have been learned in the past year, most notably around the impact on brand and livelihood, but small firms need to practise these in order to protect their business."