Only 35 percent of UK organisations have confidence in their ability to successfully carry out a disaster recovery plan.
This is according to UK-Based business downtime avoidance firm Databarracks’ annual Data Health Check, in which it notes that marginally less than half (49 percent) of all companies surveyed have full confidence that they are completely backed-up.
Despite a rise in cyber attacks over the last five years, human error and hardware failure are still the leading cause of data loss. Yet, Databarracks’ numbers show that loss through cyber attacks is gradually rising to the point where it may soon dominate as the leading cause of data loss.
The report states that there has been a sharp rise in the amount of times that organisations have had to initiate data restoration from a backup, with a striking 22 percent of firms saying they do so on a daily basis.
Just over 20 percent said that they do so once per month, while 19 percent stated that it happens more than once per week.
Peter Groucutt, Managing Director at Databarracks, commented: “Organisations are lacking something in terms of disaster recovery strategy, and the policies, procedures and technology needed to execute this strategy. It’s hard to function confidently as a business if you’re unsure of how well you’d cope if disaster struck – whether that’s cyber-related or something else like a power outage.”
Content from our partners
Data Disaster Recovery Plan Testing
In positive news Databarracks has recorded a rise in the testing of backup restoring systems, testing of which for 34 percent of firms happens on a monthly basis. Meanwhile tests carried out quarterly have remained steady over the last ten years with 28 percent confirming that this is the rate at which they test.
A recent report from IBM’s Cyber security division found that a single destructive malware cyber attack can destroy over 12,000 devices in one attack and cost an organisation more than £164 million.
That report concluded that these types of attacks on the rise and over half of them are targeting the manufacturing industry.
Financial costs caused by attacks or data loss is an acute worry to organisations, as nearly a quarter of respondents to Databarracks commented that that their biggest concern during a data disaster is a potential loss of revenue, while just 17 percent commented that they were worried about brand damage.
Groucutt commented that: “These concerns are actually very reasonable. This year we’ve seen disasters cause both, but we can minimise, or even eliminate these consequences with good Business Continuity planning.
