Majority of US organizations have tested business continuity plans in last six months

A recent survey jointly conducted by Strohl Systems and CPM Global Assurance has found that 58 percent of US organizations have exercised their plan in the past six months, with nearly a quarter of all respondents having tested it in the last month. Conversely, 17 percent have never tested their plan and nearly seven percent tested their plan over one year ago.

“By all accounts, business continuity plans should be tested on at least an annual basis,” said Brian Turley, President of Strohl Systems. “It is encouraging to see the majority of organizations doing this, but the number of organizations with an untested plan is still too high. Those organizations are needlessly risking their operations by blindly trusting an untested plan.”

Other results of the survey include:

* When asked which event most concerns them from a continuity of operations perspective 49.2 percent said accidental disasters, 36.5 percent indicated natural disasters and 14.3 percent responded intentional manmade disasters such as terrorism.

* 27 percent of the respondents said they use a virtual command center when testing or activating business continuity plans.

* The majority of respondents indicated they receive strong executive support for their BCP program. On a scale of 1-5 (5 being tremendous support and 1 being weak support) 57.8 percent said they would rate the level of support as a four or five. Only 5.1 percent rated their executive support as a one.

* Thirty-three percent of the respondents said they use an automated notification system (up 8.2 percent from October 2005) and 26.2 percent said they plan to explore this solution.

www.strohlsystems.com

•Date: 21st Dec 2006• Region: US •Type: Article •Topic: BC stats
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