News & Blog
Survey Says More Businesses Have Disaster Plans ... But Never Update Them.
By Francis West on 6th October 2016
Filed under: Disaster Recovery
The results of a recent survey sponsored by Cloud provider Databarracks shows that although the demand for Disaster Recovery Plans increases every year, businesses are failing to keep them updated or to test them.
The Databarracks survey results were drawn from answers provided by 356 IT professionals in the UK and, although more than half of the organisations they work for (52%) already have a DRP, almost a third of them are not up to date.
What is a little more worrying is that 42% of those surveyed said that their DRP hadn’t been tested in the last 12 months. In a world where cyber threats are evolving and changing rapidly and data breaches are becoming more common, the need to keep any plans current is greater than ever.
Worries About The Plans ... And A Lack of Confidence.
The Databarracks survey also showed that although IT professionals know that they need to have a plan, they are not necessarily confident in today’s business environment that it will work in reality. For example, of the (only 32%) of respondents said that they were ‘very confident’ in their DRP compared to 41% last year, and there was a 4% increase this year in those who had concerns about their DRP.
Reasons For Downtime.
The survey showed why a DRP is necessary as only 22% of respondents said they had no downtime in the last year. Some of the most common reasons for downtime in the last year recorded in the survey were hardware failure and connectivity issues (both around 20%), followed by upgrades and patching at 15%.
Fast Recovery?
Disappointingly, the survey results showed that only 71% of respondents thought they could recover from a disaster in under 24 hours and only 34% in less than 4 hours.
Constraints on Recovery Time.
The main reasons why organisations may be slower than they’d like to recover from a disaster were given as financial and technical constraints.
What Does This Mean For Your Business?
One thing your business can be sure of is that if you can’t afford an IT disaster then you should be able to afford an effective disaster recovery, business continuity, and virtualization service.
The plans that you do put into place, however, should reflect the real business environment that you are now in i.e. they should be kept up to date and tested regularly.
The frequency of your tests of your DRP may vary depending on the particular piece of the plan you’re working within your business. Your DRP should really require a review once a year, although some DRPs could require reviews once a month and some may even require a review each time a product (or the environment it's in) changes.
It may be wise to seek professional help in the form of Disaster Recovery as a service (DRaaS) from a professional and experienced specialist IT company, custom solutions and Virtual Disaster Recovery Services.
Survey Says More Businesses Have Disaster Plans ... But Never Update Them.
The results of a recent survey sponsored by Cloud provider Databarracks shows that although the demand for Disaster Recovery Plans increases every year, businesses are failing to keep them updated or to test them.
The Databarracks survey results were drawn from answers provided by 356 IT professionals in the UK and, although more than half of the organisations they work for (52%) already have a DRP, almost a third of them are not up to date.
What is a little more worrying is that 42% of those surveyed said that their DRP hadn’t been tested in the last 12 months. In a world where cyber threats are evolving and changing rapidly and data breaches are becoming more common, the need to keep any plans current is greater than ever.
Worries About The Plans ... And A Lack of Confidence.
The Databarracks survey also showed that although IT professionals know that they need to have a plan, they are not necessarily confident in today’s business environment that it will work in reality. For example, of the (only 32%) of respondents said that they were ‘very confident’ in their DRP compared to 41% last year, and there was a 4% increase this year in those who had concerns about their DRP.
Reasons For Downtime.
The survey showed why a DRP is necessary as only 22% of respondents said they had no downtime in the last year. Some of the most common reasons for downtime in the last year recorded in the survey were hardware failure and connectivity issues (both around 20%), followed by upgrades and patching at 15%.
Fast Recovery?
Disappointingly, the survey results showed that only 71% of respondents thought they could recover from a disaster in under 24 hours and only 34% in less than 4 hours.
Constraints on Recovery Time.
The main reasons why organisations may be slower than they’d like to recover from a disaster were given as financial and technical constraints.
What Does This Mean For Your Business?
One thing your business can be sure of is that if you can’t afford an IT disaster then you should be able to afford an effective disaster recovery, business continuity, and virtualization service.
The plans that you do put into place, however, should reflect the real business environment that you are now in i.e. they should be kept up to date and tested regularly.
The frequency of your tests of your DRP may vary depending on the particular piece of the plan you’re working within your business. Your DRP should really require a review once a year, although some DRPs could require reviews once a month and some may even require a review each time a product (or the environment it's in) changes.
It may be wise to seek professional help in the form of Disaster Recovery as a service (DRaaS) from a professional and experienced specialist IT company, custom solutions and Virtual Disaster Recovery Services.
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