An annual survey by AT&T on business continuity and disaster recovery preparedness shows that one in five U.S. businesses do not have a developed continuity plan in place and that nearly 30 percent of business do not even consider it a priority.
In addition, the study, which surveyed IT executives from companies throughout the country that had at least $25 million in revenue found that:
• IT security remains vital, despite companies’ enhanced capabilities to deal with worms, viruses and other cyber threats. Nearly two-third of the IT executives surveyed felt that hacking would become the most significant threat to cyber security. • Though businesses evolve, their continuity plans do not. • Hosted security solutions need to be simplistic. • There is insufficient space to store important data. More than one-fourth of IT executives surveyed said they had a problem within the past year with storage space on their company computers or servers. • Communication between employees is critical in avoiding and dealing with security or disaster threats.In a statement issued by AT&T, a company spokesman stated that "businesses of all sizes need to be vigilant about business continuity planning" and that "organizations must regularly test and update their plans to reflect changes in their business" so that they can be prepared to maintain operations in the event of a disaster or security breach.
