| CIOs and CSOs under pressure to improve business continuity plans
More than half (61 percent) of the respondents indicated they are either ‘not very’, ‘not at all’, or ‘only somewhat’ confident in their company’s preparedness for a disaster. Those surveyed gave their organization an average grade of C+/B- for various components of their business continuity plans. At the same time, nearly half (46 percent) of the respondents report that their company currently has an RTO of less than 12 hours, and nearly one quarter expect these recovery windows to decrease even further in the coming year. When asked to identify the components they find most challenging about business continuity planning, respondents most often cited funding and people (24 percent and 20 percent, respectively), followed by management sponsorship (12 percent), testing (9 percent) and infrastructure/facilities (7 percent). IDG Research Services also uncovered an alarming percentage of respondents whose companies do not test their plans often enough for them to be most effective during a disruption. A total of 80 percent indicated that they test their disaster recovery plans annually or less often. In the past, annual testing may have been sufficient to accommodate changes in business processes; however, today, companies are facing ever-increasing, nearly constant change to mission critical processes and systems, from staff updates to alterations in hardware and software – sometimes daily. As a result, business continuity plans become outdated much more quickly than in the past. Companies can address this issue by moving to more frequent updates of their plans. "This research underscores the importance of comprehensive business continuity planning at enterprise organizations,” said Janet King, vice president of IDG Research Services. “Frequent testing should be considered a necessity in order to accommodate ongoing changes in business processes and IT infrastructure.”
•Date: 20th August 2007• Region: US/World •Type: Article •Topic: BC statistics
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