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Survey Reveals UK Organizations Lack Confidence in Data Recovery

December 20, 2011

A new survey of 1,750 European IT decision makers conducted by Vanson Bourne revealed the insecurities that UK organizations have about data loss. According to an It World Canada article, the survey reported that 70% of UK organizations are not confident of their ability to fully recover their systems or data after downtime or data loss.

The “European Disaster Recovery Survey 2011: Data Today Gone Tomorrow: How Well Companies Are Poised For IT Recovery” revealed that nearly 73% of UK organizations experienced downtime in the previous year, which is compared to an average of 43% in Europe, with Russia reporting the lowest downtime at 29%. The most common reason listed by UK organizations for experiencing down time was hardware failure. It was also the most common cause of data loss.

Additionally, the survey found that 30% of UK firms admitted to experiencing a data loss in the previous 12 months and that it takes UK organizations two days, on average, to return to full operational status after suffering downtime. 

According to the article, data corruption and loss of power were other common reasons for downtime or data loss. Despite 73% of UK organizations admitting to down time, only 55% reviewed and changed their IT systems back-up and disaster recovery processes following a systems failure. 

The article noted that UK firms stored a back-up copy of data offsite and were as likely to use disk-based storage as they were tape. While France, Germany, Spain, and Russia saw lower data loss percentages, they noted that their preferred option for disaster recovery was tape.

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