Arcserve has released key findings from a global research study that shows that many organizations are failing to effectively test and update disaster recovery plans; and also identified difficulties in achieving recovery targets.
The research was conducted by Dimensional Research on behalf of Arcserve and received responses from 1,121 IT decision-makers. The survey was fielded in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada.
Key findings include:
- The loss of critical data continues to disrupt businesses and remain an issue for organizations. 76 percent of respondents reported a severe loss of critical data in their organization. Of that number, 45 percent had experienced permanent data loss.
- Many organizations could not maintain business continuity on time once data was lost or compromised. 83 percent of respondents said that 12 hours or less is an acceptable level of downtime for critical systems before there is a measurable negative business impact. Still, only 52 percent could recover from a severe data loss in 12 hours or less. 29 percent of the businesses surveyed couldn't recover data for one day or more.
- 95 percent of respondents in the survey said their company has a disaster recovery plan. However, only 24 percent have a mature plan that is well documented, tested, and updated. 83 percent said their organizations include data resilience in their strategies. Still, only 23 percent have a mature approach with associated goals to track progress.
Florian Malecki, executive vice president, marketing at Arcserve commented: "Our annual survey reinforces the business imperative for organizations to implement a data resilience strategy that incorporates mature data backup and disaster recovery plans. We live in a world of growing ransomware attacks and frequent natural disasters. Any downtime from data loss can be destructive for a business from impacting sales to losing customer loyalty."
