Quarter of firms not testing their disaster recovery plan

Irish businesses can expect to wait up to 40 hours to recover lost critical data, but more than a quarter of companies never check their disaster recovery plan is sufficient, a new survey has revealed.

The survey was carried out by TechPro on behalf of ICT company Datapac. It questioned 163 IT professionals about how they manage the growth of data and the demands it is placing on their systems.

In the past year data volumes have risen 37 per cent, putting business continuity systems and technology infrastructure under increasing pressure. Yet 26 per cent of firms said they did not put their disaster recovery plan to the test to ensure their back-ups were recoverable.

Datapac’s general manager of service delivery Karen O’Connor said the length of time to recover data was “unacceptably long”.

"Delays of this magnitude will cause significant financial and reputational damage for most businesses in Ireland. Another worrying finding is that more than a quarter of businesses never carry our tests on their disaster recovery capabilities.

“With data volumes continuing to grow at pace and security threats becoming increasingly prevalent, these are problems that just won’t go away.”

The survey also found that mobile working was becoming more popular, with 76 per cent of companies describing it as more prevalent. Despite this almost a third said they do not have technology platforms and support to manage such working effectively.

Fixing software

The survey also found more than a third of time was spent on low-level incidents such as fixing software, printers and IT hardware, with 75 per cent feeling they were being hindered in their ability to add value to their organisations as a result of this.

The majority of Irish organisations are outsourcing some of their services, with 80 per cent saying they outsourced back-up, storage, security or print services because of limited resources, a need for greater security and compliance, and to cut costs.

This comes at a cost, although not as high as businesses might expect, with 28 per cent of IT budgets on average going to managed service providers

“One of the big issues for Irish IT departments is that they are struggling to add value to their organisation while consistently firefighting and dealing with reactive low-level IT incidents,” Ms O’Connor said.

“They really need to prioritise what’s most important to their business and give this the time and focus it deserves. With ongoing improvements in automation and managed service delivery, this presents a great opportunity for Irish organisations to have the freedom to innovate and add real value to their businesses.”