Survey and Research Data

A survey of 200 IT managers by Imation in 2005 concerning disaster recovery practices found that the main reasons organisations evaluated their data recovery and back up practices were:

• e-mail viruses (59%)

• Cyber attacks (31%)

• Natural disasters (28%)

• Terrorist attacks (22%)

• Government regulations (19%)

• Employee sabotage (17%)

• Homeland security issues (15%)

• 71% of the organisations surveyed had disaster recovery plans in place

• 40% of companies don't test their disaster recovery plan after each update; and

• 28% percent of companies took a wait-and-see approach.

• 32% performed scheduled testing and evaluation of their storage backup systems at least quarterly and another 35% did so once a year or less. [10]

Crisis Management and communication plans

In reply to a 2005 global IABC Research Foundation survey concerning the preparation of formal communications plans in the event of natural disaster/organisation crises, respondents reported that:

• 30% had no formal plan

• 50% of these unprepared groups needed to rapidly put a plan together in the event of a crisis

• 69% of organisations having a crisis communication plan had needed to implement it, with 53% partially implementing plans, and 47% fully implementing plans.

• Of the organisations that partially implemented their plans, "communication with employees" was the most commonly implemented component (95%), followed by "coordination with other departments or units to determine appropriate communication responses" (93%)

• In regard to the effectiveness of their communication plans; 66% cited the plans as being "very effective," and 33% believed that they were "somewhat effective." [11]

Disaster Recovery (DR) planning – back office operation redundancy (alternative/duplicate systems) valued by banks

The following data was collated from those responding to a 2005 JPMorgan Chase survey concerning disaster recovery planning by US banking organisations:

• 37% indicated that their organisations were well prepared for natural disasters such as hurricanes.

• 55% indicated that they were "somewhat prepared"

• 8% were not prepared

• 50% had either tested their DR plan, or were expecting to do so. The following aspects were valued most in connection with disaster-recovery planning:

• Back-office operation redundancy (72%)

• Communications (68%)

• Offline business operations (65%)

• Corporate communications (58%)

• Employee payroll and emergency funds (49%) [1]

Business Continuity Planning – DR plan testing

In a US Computerworld survey (2004) concerning BCP involving 224 IT managers, respondents replied to the question "when was your organisation's disaster recovery plan last tested?" as follows:

• Less that one month ago (6%)

• 1 to 3 months ago (24%)
• 4 to 6 months ago (18%)
• 6 to 12 months ago (23%)
• More that 1 year ago (10%)
• Don't Know (19%) [12]