60% of Financial Service Organizations Have Implemented a Full Scale Business Continuity Plan
According to the Acronis Global Disaster Recovery Index 2012, the financial services sector has pushed disaster recovery to the top of its IT agenda as a result of the wide spread natural disasters of 2011.
However, compliance, security and virtual server protection remain big concerns for the industry.
The Acronis survey of almost 6,000 small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) in 18 countries, including Australia, showed that 60% of financial services globally implemented a full-scale business continuity plan in 2011. As a result, the financial services sector is the most confident industry in its backup and disaster recovery processes. On average, the sector spends 12% of its overall IT budget on disaster recovery.
Despite this move towards more stringent processes, virtual backup practices are lacking with a fifth (19%) of financial organisations stating they don’t back up their virtual servers as often as their physical ones. And over half (55%) back up their virtual servers infrequently (on a weekly, monthly or irregular basis). This is surprising when most stated that the monetary value of data on their virtual servers is equal to that held on their physical ones.
IT mangers within financial service organisations are also highly concerned about the security risks of backing up data to the cloud, with 47% citing security as the key barrier to entry. Lack of confidence in cloud providers and well as non compliance with data protection laws are also concerns. As a consequence, 45% of companies are relying on taking a tape or disk offsite at the end of each day as their offsite disaster recovery strategy.
The finance industry is, however, the most likely to consolidate the number of tools it is using for disaster recovery, with 44% of IT managers stating that they only use one solution. Such consolidation can save costs, reduce risk and increase efficiency. In fact, 77% of those surveyed stated that the availability of one disaster recovery solution for physical, virtual and cloud environments would be the best way to improve their disaster recovery.
Karl Sice, General Manager – Pacific at Acronis, said, “IT managers within financial services state that the biggest threat to their disaster recovery strategy is complacency.”
Notes to the editor:
The survey was conducted by the Ponemon Institute across 18 countries in September and October 2011. Over 6,000 IT practitioners were surveyed in small- to mid-market organisations with no more than 1,000 seats (1-500 seats in Australia). Details of how the index was calculated and where each country appears can be found here:
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About Acronis
Acronis is a leading provider of easy-to-use disaster recovery and data protection solutions for physical, virtual and cloud environments. Its patented disk imaging technology enables corporations, SMBs and consumers to protect their digital assets. With Acronis’ disaster recovery, deployment and migration software, users protect their digital information, maintain business continuity and reduce downtime.
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