Survey Reveals Lax Disaster Recovery Preparation

By Cheryl Knight, contributing writer

When business is good and a company is performing at its optimum capacity, it’s easy for a company not to think about what they would do in the instance of a disaster. While organizations usually have a contingency plan in place if the power goes out or the fire alarm goes off, some are not ready for a natural disaster that prevents employees from making it to work for days — or even weeks — at a time.

It is preparation for such instances that determine if a business can survive a major disaster at all, or survive with minimal damage to its finances and reputation. It’s also important to remember that implementing a disaster recovery plan is much different than actually carrying it out.

A Backup My Info! (BUMI) report highlights the need for more in-depth preparation when it comes to companies and their disaster recovery plans.

BUMI Disaster Recovery Report Findings

According to the report, 88 percent of the IT consultants surveyed said their customers had a recovery plan in place in case of a disaster. But, only 39 percent thought their clients were adequately prepared for a major disaster, such as a long-lasting power outage. Once access to data was lost, 79 percent of companies expected it to be restored within hours, and 19 percent expected restoration of data within several days. Only 2 percent of companies had no confidence in the restoration of their data.

A somewhat alarming statistic revealed by the survey is only 44 percent of IT consultants who responded checked customer data on a daily basis, while 15 percent checked weekly, 21 percent monthly, and 8 percent yearly. What was even more surprising is that 13 percent of respondents do not check their clients’ data backups for errors at all.

“Data backup is not a ‘set it and forget it’ operation,” said Jennifer Walzer, CEO of BUMI. “This study suggests there is a lack of urgency to ensure that backup errors either do not occur or get corrected quickly. Additionally, these findings underscore the need for IT consultants, channel partners, and their respective clients to work with a trusted partner to ensure data backup and recovery procedures are managed proactively and continuously.”