British businesses labouring under false sense of security

UK companies are increasingly reliant on the confidentiality, availability and integrity of their data. Most are willing to invest to protect it, but many are finding that their backup facilities are letting them down. These are among the initial findings from the Department of Trade and Industry's 2004 Information Security Breaches Survey, conducted by a consortium led by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The telephone survey of some 1,000 companies of all sizes found that:
* 87 percent reported significant dependence on electronic data (up from 76 percent two years ago);
* An overwhelming 88 percent found it easy or very easy to justify the cost of backup and disaster recovery facilities;
* Around two-thirds of large businesses suffered an incident in the last year where they had to restore significant data from backup (e.g. systems failure or physical theft);
* Roughly half the businesses that had a systems failure or physical theft suffered major disruption to their business operations, some for up to a month;
* As a result, 95 percent of companies had some form of backup facilities in place;
* However, these vary considerably, and may represent a false sense of security; for example, only a third of businesses store their backups off-site, and less than 20 percent backup their desktops;
* Only 8 percent of companies have tested their disaster recovery plans to see if they would work in practice.

The full findings of the 2004 Survey will be launched at InfoSecurity Europe in London, April 27th-29th.

Chris Potter, the PricewaterhouseCoopers partner leading the survey, said: "Many businesses do not realise the value of their data until it is too late. Others think they have good backup systems in place, but then discover they are unreliable when needed. Also, we often find it the case - and the findings support this - that IT staff are unaware of what data is business critical and so should be backed up.

"There is a disconnect between the boardroom and the IT function which is potentially dangerous. Despite 9/11, the vast majority of UK businesses are living on a prayer when it comes to disaster recovery."

The 2004 DTI Information Security Breaches Survey is the most authoritative survey about this issue in the UK. It is part of the Department of Trade and Industry's work with British industry to understand the impact of information security breaches. It aims to raise awareness among UK companies and public sector organisations of the value of effective information security management.

The survey was be conducted between October 2003 and January 2004 and is based on 1,000 telephone interviews with organisations of all sizes across all areas of the UK, plus a series of face to face interviews.

www.security-survey.gov.uk

•Date: 17th February 2004 •Region: UK •Type: Article •Topic: BC stats
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