Business continuity and disaster recoveryThe larger the organization, the more prepared it is
Business continuity planning was seen as a priority by 71 percent of U.S. companies, 80 percent of companies had a business continuity plan; as company size increases, so does the likelihood that companies have a continuity plan
AT&T has published the results of its latest annual survey of business continuity practices in U.S. organizations. The 2008 survey is the seventh such survey and gathered responses from 500 IT executives around the country. All the companies in the survey group had revenues in excess of $25 million, according to Dun and Bradstreet, and 73 percent represented companies with 100 or more employees. Overall, business continuity planning was seen as a priority by seven out of ten (71 percent) respondents and eight out of ten indicated that their companies had a business continuity plan. This finding is proportional to the size of the enterprise. As company size increases, so does the likelihood that companies will have a plan (88 percent of those with 500 or more employees compared to 78 percent of those with 100 to 499 employees and 75 percent of those with fewer than 100 employees.
The survey also found that companies “are more diligent about updating their plans than they are about testing them.” A majority (59 percent) of companies have had their plans updated in the past 12 months, but fewer (46 percent) have had the plans fully tested during the same time period. Sixty percent of companies have made some type of business change in the past year which would warrant updating their business continuity plans; however in practice only 28 percent updated business continuity plans as a result of such changes. Two out of three (67 percent) of respondents’ organizations have set target recovery times for each of their key business processes. Companies with 100 or more employees are most likely to have set target recovery times (70 percent of those with 500 or more employees and 69 percent of those with 100 to 499 employees compared to 57 percent of those with less than 100 employees). The vast majority (79 percent) of companies have instituted special arrangements for communicating with key executives during a natural disaster. A similar proportion (80 percent) have e-mail or text messaging capabilities to reach employees outside of work, and two-thirds (66 percent) have systems in place that enable most employees to work from home or remote locations. Only four out of ten (39 percent) companies have automated calling systems to reach employees by telephone or cell phone outside of work.
