Staggering survey results show that 72 per cent of businesses are happy to lose over 24 hours’ worth of data after an incident.
This means if a widespread Ransomware attack occurred it would cost the UK billions.
The results were uncovered through an anonymous survey where participants were asked to complete a number of questions based around Disaster Recovery preparedness within their organisation. The research was conducted just two days after the widely publicised Ransomware outbreak WannaCry, which held the NHS ransom, so there was an increased awareness of data protection overall.
This is not the first year that the team has explored Disaster Recovery preparation. Compared to last year there has been a slight improvement in overall trends, however, too many businesses are still leaving themselves at risk of bankruptcy should an incident occur.
Compared to last year the number of businesses continually protecting their data has increased by 8 per cent. Businesses were also generally more confident in their overall continuity plans than the previous year, with a 2 per cent increase in businesses with an active recovery plan in place.
The research concluded that there was still a staggering lack of education around Disaster recovery overall and only 41 per cent of businesses were confident they had a Business Continuity plan in place. The survey continued to uncover that an astonishing 13 per cent of organisations had never backed up any of their business data.
What’s even more concerning is that businesses were seemingly happy to risk this data loss, given that 43 per cent of businesses had lost or potentially lost vital information over the last two years. This frightening statistic doesn’t only apply to SMEs within the Yorkshire region, as 28 per cent of those surveyed had a business turnover of over £10 million, with 44 per cent having 51+ employees.
The results also uncovered that if an IT incident was to occur, 28 per cent of companies didn’t know if they’d be able to restore their information. Only 29 per cent of businesses continuously protected their data. Worryingly, 13 per cent of businesses knew they wouldn’t be able to recover all of their data after an incident. Last year this figure was 15 per cent.
