REPORT: ONE IN THREE FIRMS LACKS BUSINESS CONTINUITY PLAN

Jun 1, 2005 12:00 PM

Almost a third of firms (28 percent) have no formal plans to protect against disasters caused by terrorism, natural disasters or systems failures, according to a survey from AT&T and Cisco Systems in cooperation with the Economist Intelligence Unit. This is despite the fact that 28 percent of the firms in the survey admitted they have already experienced a full shutdown of key business operations as a result of a disaster in the past.

The survey, which was conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, asked 240 senior executives worldwide to comment on their firms' capabilities in business continuity planning.

The research reveals that many firms are skeptical about their ability to manage threats to their most valuable assets. Fewer than half of the survey participants are confident that their organization is able to protect their business fully from threats to digital assets (for example IT systems and data) and general infrastructure.

Only 48 percent are confident they can ensure the safety of their employees in the event of a disaster.

U.S. firms are most likely to have business continuity plans in place, according to the survey. However, even those firms that do have a business continuity plan often fail to test it with sufficient regularity: Fewer than half of companies surveyed had tested their plan in the past 12 months.

“As business becomes ever more network-intensive with IT systems increasingly serving as the central nervous system of the corporation, the risks of even a minor disruption having a huge impact across the business and throughout the supply chain gets even greater,” says Bill Archer, president of AT&T's operations for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “It's vital that every enterprise has in place a reliable, robust and scalable business continuity plan; increased regulatory exposure and financial accountability demands that this is not a topic executives can afford to ignore.”

Copies of the EIU research white paper “Business Continuity - Riding the Storm” can be downloaded at www.att.com/businesscontinuity/

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