07/04/2008

More than a quarter of UK companies still do not have a disaster recovery plan on their IT systems.

Early findings from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform's 2008 Information Security Breaches survey (ISBS) found that, while most companies back up their systems and data, 28 per cent still have no disaster recovery plan in place.

The survey, which is conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, also reported that half of the companies with security plans failed to test them, raising concerns for the security measures in place.

This is despite the fact that 58 per cent of the businesses polled felt that they would suffer 'significant business disruption' if they lost a day on their IT systems.

PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Chris Potter said: 'The number of companies with a disaster recovery plan has gone up. However, experience shows that plans are only effective if regularly tested.'

He added that, while it was encouraging to see the majority of companies making backups off-site, it should not take an incident to raise awareness.

The full results of the ISBS will be announced on April 22nd.