The majority of businesses in North America are not fully prepared to handle a major disaster striking their IT, network and communications infrastructure according to a biennial technology survey conducted by Evolve IP. The survey of approximately 1,000 IT professionals and executives uncovered risky behaviors exhibited by the majority of organizations including incomplete and untested disaster recovery plans and outdated technologies and methodologies. The survey also identified three main characteristics of organizations that felt ‘very prepared’ to recover from a disaster.
Highlights from the survey include:
- Less than half of those surveyed (48.5 percent) had performed a disaster recovery test in 2017.
- Nearly 7 in 10 respondents (68.5 percent) noted that they had an incomplete disaster recovery plan. Of those, only 58 percent had a plan that was at least 75 percent complete. When asked if their plan was implemented formally in the business, just 67 percent indicated ‘yes’.
- 16 percent of disaster recovery plans didn’t document recovery point objectives and 13.5 percent of IT professionals were unfamiliar with the term. 15 percent of DR plans didn’t document recovery time objectives and 9 percent of IT professionals were unfamiliar with the term.
- 5 percent were using backup tapes in their disaster recovery implementation.
There were several key factors that helped increase the confidence of IT professionals in feeling ‘very prepared’ to recover from a disaster. They were:
- Sufficient funding – individuals that indicated that their company had invested sufficiently in disaster recovery were more likely to feel very prepared. (65.5 percent vs. 19 percent)
- Compliance requirements – organizations with compliance requirements tend to be more confident in their ability to recover from a disaster. (51.5 percent vs 34 percent)
- Virtual private / private hosted solutions – leveraging either DRaaS or utilizing a MSP environment helps IT pros feel more assured. (56.5 percent vs. 46.5 percent)
There were 63 survey respondents that noted their firms met all three of these criteria and of those, 78 percent felt ‘very prepared’ to handle a disaster. Conversely, there were also 63 companies that had the opposite qualities and just 6.5 percent of those individuals expressed the same level of confidence.
