A recipe for disaster
A recipe for disaster
Despite the warning that the events of September 11, and more recently, the power cut that affected the whole of the Eastern seaboard of the US, the message to have a disaster recovery plan in place is still not getting through to many IT managers.
That was among the findings of a recent survey on backup and disaster recovery practices of 202 IT directors and network storage managers, conducted by data storage vendor Imation.
It emerged that nearly one in three companies continue to operate without a formal disaster recovery plan in place, while two out of three companies who do have backup and disaster recovery plans believe that those plans have significant vulnerabilities.
Other notable findings included the fact that 64 percent of the respondents who have backup and disaster recovery plans do not have them externally audited on a regular basis, which is considered essential in order to ensure that no flaws exist in the plan.
Jim Ellis, director of business strategy for Imation's storage and information management division, said the cost involved into conducting such audits on an annual basis should be easy to justify.
"The average downtime costs a company about a million dollars an hour (US) in (lost) revenue. In the energy industry, an hour of downtime costs US$2.8 million an hour. For manufacturing companies, it costs $1.6 million. Those kinds of numbers make it easier to justify (external audits) as a way to minimise risk."
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