A survey conducted by Opinium on behalf of Beaming, the business ISP, has found that while most (83 percent) of UK firms backup their data, half save it to servers or storage devices in the same premises. 44 percent of small businesses, 42 percent of medium sized firms and 34 percent of large organizations currently store backup information in the same location as it is generated, leaving them vulnerable to data loss through theft or fire, for example.
17 percent of businesses keep no data backups whatsoever and store information only on individual computers and employee devices. Sole traders and micro companies employing less than 10 people are most likely to be guilty of not backing up their data.
Only a third (35 percent) of UK businesses currently store their backup data outside of the office:
- 15 percent of sole traders and 13 percent of micro businesses backup their data to cloud storage services from companies such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon;
- 24 percent of small and 18 percent of medium sized businesses require employees to physically take backups of data home on portable storage devices;
- 33 percent of large and 32 percent of medium sized companies copy data to their own servers located in dedicated data centres or colocation facilities.
Less than a fifth (18 percent) of businesses currently backup their data to facilities located at least 30 miles from their own premises, the minimum distance recommended by business continuity experts to limit the IT impact of major disasters. Most of these companies adhering the ‘30 mile rule’ are using cloud-base storage services and do not know precisely where their data is held.
Methodology
Opinium surveyed the leaders of 514 UK businesses on their approaches to data backups and storage.
