The DTI Information Security Breaches Survey 2004, managed by PricewaterhouseCoopers, found that 87% of companies revealed a significant dependence on electronic data – compared to 76% two years ago when the survey was last conducted. Eighty-eight percent of companies found it easy or very easy to justify the cost of backup and disaster recovery facilities.
One-third of all companies and two-thirds of large businesses surveyed had suffered a serious incident such as a systems failure or physical theft, which meant they had had to restore significant data from backup. Of these businesses, 61% took over a day to solve the problem, with some taking up to a month.
The survey found that 95% of companies had put in place some sort of backup facility, but these were not necessarily sufficient to prevent problems in the future. Only a third of businesses had taken the step of storing their backups off-site – very useful in case of theft – and fewer than 20% backed up their desktops.
Twenty percent of all companies (and 41% of large companies) have a disaster recovery in place, but only 8% of companies have actually tested these plans to see if they would work.
According to Chris Potter, the PwC partner leading the survey:
"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."
He added, "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 survey canvassed the views of 1,000 companies of all sizes. The full results of the survey will be released at InfoSecurity Europe, which will be held in London in April.