Some 82 percent of Middle East companies suffer unplanned downtime, yet IT managers are not taking the necessary measures to ensure disaster recovery (DR) plans protect their corporate data, revealed an independent research into DR commissioned by Veritas Software.
More than 25 percent of IT managers do not test their plans and 12 percent of the medium- to large-sized companies surveyed had never reviewed their DR plan since it was created. Some 44 percent review their plans every 12 months or less frequently, making their initiatives potentially redundant.
With just 26 percent of Middle East companies creating DR plans that are influenced by regulatory compliance, Vertias warns DR planning shortfalls could not only put data at risk, but also leave companies exposed to legal risks.
Some 36 percent of Middle East companies did not know how long outages lasted -- suggesting that they do not calculate the risk and cost to the business of unplanned downtime. When DR plans are implemented, significantly, 23 percent of Middle East IT managers subsequently made changes to the plan – suggesting that with the right testing, these measures could have already been in place.
When asked where DR plans were located, only 22 percent of the respondents kept their plans at a remote/secure third party location. Seventy four percent keep their plans at their main DataCentre and eight keep their plans off-site in an ad-hoc location, including an employee's home, car or laptop.
Yet there is a divided view amongst those companies in Middle East who do not currently have a DR plan. Research reveals that 25 percent are currently compiling a plan, 50 percent believe a backup process is all that is needed, 13 percent feel that they do not have a high enough level of risk to warrant the expense of a DR plan, and a further 13 percent state that the company is too small to be investing in such a plan. — (menareport.com)
© 2003 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
