The business continuity message is getting through…

In a recent AT&T and Cisco Systems global survey of company executives, only 8 percent felt that business continuity planning was not important to their company. The survey shows that, although there is still ground to be made up, the profession has come a long way in a short time, in terms of raising awareness of it within businesses. Ten years ago, business continuity was virtually unknown beyond a small core of large companies. Now, according to the survey, 91 percent of respondents were not only aware of business continuity but recognised that it is an important issue. Unfortunately, for some, importance does not translate into action; with 27 percent of respondents stating that business continuity was ‘important but not a high priority’ and 28 percent admitting that their company did not have a business continuity plan.

However, beyond the positive highlight, the research reveals that many business continuity plans may not be as comprehensive and effective as they should be. Less than half of the survey participants are confident that their organisation is able to fully protect its business from threats to digital assets and general infrastructure. Only 48 percent are confident that they can ensure the safety of their employees in the event of a disaster.

The survey asked respondents to rank the sources of business continuity risk that were the most difficult to anticipate and protect against. Terrorism / sabotage / cyberterrorism was found to be the most difficult business continuity threat to mitigate, with 51 percent raising this as a difficulty. This was followed by natural disasters (48 percent), human error (38 percent), failure of information systems (33 percent) and failure of network infrastructure (27 percent).

28 percent of respondents’ companies have, at some stage in the past, had to suspend key business operations as a result of a disaster, although it is probable that 9/11 skewed the results, since 21 percent of people said that the suspension had been due to terrorist attack (and 34 percent of respondents were from the US). The greatest number of suspensions (22 percent) was caused by natural disaster, followed by systems failure (21 percent) and terrorism, as previously noted.

Worryingly, less than half of companies surveyed had tested their business continuity plan in the past 12 months, with 26 percent never having tested it.

Finally, although business continuity awareness seems to be reaching high levels, the business continuity manager is still a rare beast, with only 9 percent of companies having a dedicated BCM. The CFO/Treasury/Comptroller was the most common person/department to lead planning activities (19 percent of respondents), followed by the CIO (14 percent) and corporate planning (11 percent).

Free copies of the research paper, entitled ‘Business Continuity - Riding the Storm’ can be downloaded from the AT&T website at: http://www.att.com/businesscontinuity Registration is necessary before downloading.

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•Date: 19th May 2005 • Region: Various • Type: Article •Topic: BC statistics
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