A new poll carried out by Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and SunGard Availability Services has revealed that concerns over IT security have risen as a result of the recession.

The survey quizzed senior CFOs, FDs and heads of operational risk at a variety of companies and found that 39% of respondents believed that the potential damage to their business from internal and external IT security breaches and website outages has increased as a result of the current economic crisis.

Keith Tilley, managing director UK and executive vice president Europe for SunGard Availability Services, said: “All organisations need to assess the impact that business disruption could have on their ability to function effectively and put plans in place to continue normal operations in all circumstances.”

“What’s encouraging about this research, however, is that resilience is now being discussed at the highest levels of decision making within more and more organisations, whereas before it was often overlooked and left to the IT department to look after,” Tilley said.

A third of respondents indicated that risk and resilience issues are now being discussed at board level.

John Oates, IT advisory partner with Baker Tilly and chairman of the ICAEW IT faculty, said: “In the last 12 months we have seen operational risk rise up the business agenda as organisations identify new threats to their business, not least that caused by growing numbers of redundancies, both in terms of loss of knowledge and malicious attempts by departing employees to exact revenge on their employers.”

“More than ever,” Oates said, “organisations need to create contingency plans that are water-tight and workable, but also flexible enough to cope with the new and unexpected threats thrown up by the current economy.”

The survey also found that 65% of organisations believe that levels of operational risk have increased within the past year.

Roland Brook, associate director, Smith & Williamson, who took part in a roundtable to discuss the findings, said: “Resilience has become much more of a major focus for our clients over the past year as many have had to contend with new threats such as internal sabotage from disgruntled employees and external security breaches which have dramatically increased in the recession.”

“There is now a real understanding across many levels of business that firms simply cannot afford any interruptions to critical business operations,” Brook said.