Disaster Recovery Plans and Testing Are Lacking
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Disaster Recovery Plans and Testing Are Lacking
Forty percent of companies surveyed don't have a documented disaster recovery plan, and 40 percent of those that do have a DR plan test them only once annually. -
DR Planning and Testing Lags
Only 60% of the companies surveyed have a documented disaster recovery plan. 40% test their DR plans annually, 26% test once a quarter, 6% test once a month, 22% test rarely and 6% never test their plans. -
Dissatisfaction With DR Solutions
54% of respondents said DR solutions are too expensive, and 37% said they are too difficult to use. -
DR Plan Boosts Confidence
78% of respondents who are confident in their DR strategy have a formally documented plan. -
Cloud-Based DR Helps
90% of the respondents who use the cloud in their DR solutions expressed confidence in that strategy, whereas just 74% who use only on-premise DR solutions feel confident. -
Common Causes of Downtime
Power outage: 75%, Hardware error: 53%, Human error: 35%, Virus or malware attack: 34%, Data corruption: 26% -
More Common Causes of Downtime
Unexpected updates and patches: 24%, Natural disaster: 20%, Expected updates and patches: 20%, On-site disaster: 11% -
Reliability Is Critical
Asked the most important factor in a DR solution, 54% of respondents named reliability, followed by simplicity (16%), cost (16%) and speedy recovery (15%). -
The Cost of Downtime
67% of the respondents estimated that their business would lose more than with $20,000 as a result of downtime. 27% reported that downtime would cost more than $100,000 per event. -
Problems Caused by Downtime
Loss of customers: 65%, Loss of employee productivity: 29%, Delayed product and service delivery: 26%, Loss of revenue: 24%, Damage to brand and reputation: 11%, Incurring significant recovery cost: 4% -
Re-evaluating DR Solutions
After their last downtime incident, 55% of organizations changed their DR strategy, 55% changed or added DR technology, and 39% increased their DR investments.
Only 60 percent of the organizations surveyed have a documented disaster recovery plan in place, and just 40 percent of them test the plan annually, according to a new survey. Moreover, the majority of companies are dissatisfied with disaster recovery solutions, finding them either too costly or too difficult to implement. However, the survey respondents who use cloud-based DR expressed confidence in that strategy. In addition, many think of DR as preparing for catastrophic natural events, but most IT downtime is caused by power outages, hardware and human errors, and security vulnerabilities, according to the survey. The report, "2016 State of Disaster Recovery," was conducted by Zetta, a provider of data protection and disaster recovery solutions. In October, the firm surveyed 403 IT professionals who work in 23 industries for organizations ranging in size from 50 to more than 1,000 employees. "This study reveals that even as organizations improve their disaster readiness, they still fall behind in planning and testing their strategy," said Mike Grossman, CEO of Zetta. "Yet this is rapidly shifting as DR confidence grows with the increasing move toward cloud-based DR solutions." Here are some key findings of the report.