Survey: Most EMEA countries unprepared for a disaster

Computing South Africa - JOHANNESBURG -- (Computerworld South Africa) - Veritas Software Corp. last week released the results of its third annual disaster recovery study which revealed, among other things, that 97% of businesses surveyed in EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) would be unable to continue normal operations following a data center fire.
The survey, conducted worldwide by U.K.-based Dynamic Markets, polled 1,259 IT professionals at companies with more than 500 employees.
Of the EMEA IT managers surveyed, only 3% said they would be able to continue with business as usual after a data center fire. Thirty-eight percent had no idea how long it would take to resume bare-bones operations, 31% could achieve bare-bones service within 12 hours, and 38% didn't know how long it would take to get back to business as usual. In addition, 52% said that the only copy of their organization's disaster recovery plan was stored in the data center.
According to the research, 16% of companies surveyed in EMEA don't have a disaster recovery plan in place. Thirty-four percent of these companies said they had not got around to it, and 24% were in the process of putting a plan together. Another 24% felt they didn't need a disaster recovery plan, and of these, 19% say the company is too small to merit one, and 6% say that their board wouldnt back such an initiative.
Of those companies that do have disaster recovery plans in place, the majority don't review them often enough, resulting in plans that are falling behind in the face of rapidly changing technology.
However, 92% of those companies with plans do actually review them: 13% do so monthly; 8% do so every three months; 14% every six months, 34% annually, 12% review on an ad hoc basis, and 9% review either less than every three years, never review, or do not know if they review. The figures for those companies that actually test their plans are much the same.
Chris Boorman, Veritas' vice president for marketing in EMEA, said, "The issue of change control is an interesting one, particularly in light of the substantial increase in patches that we have been seeing lately, and spiraling concerns about viruses and accidental or malicious employee behavior."
"While patch updates will rarely trigger the need for a change in DR strategy, IT departments should certainly be reviewing their DR plans more frequently than once a year," he concludes.