According to the 2012 Acronis Disaster Recovery Index, small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) in the U.S. financial services sector are stumbling when it comes to backup and disaster recovery preparedness.

With 65 percent expressing a lack of confidence in their IT personnel to execute data recovery operations in the event of a disaster, and only a third believing they could recover quickly in the event of system downtime, it is clear that a serious gap in backup and disaster recovery planning exists within the financial services sector. This gap is so serious, in fact, that 45 percent of U.S. financial services SMBs surveyed said downtime can cost them at least a quarter of a million dollars a year.

Respondents cited several key challenges to implementing a proper backup and disaster recovery approach. Only 36 percent believe they have ample resources, and only 32 percent believe they have adequate technologies to execute effective backup and disaster recovery. Additionally, a mere 38 percent felt they had sufficient support from their executives.

Keeping up with IT developments was also a major issue, with 68 percent of financial services organizations seeing the increasing complexity of infrastructure across physical, virtual and cloud platforms as their greatest challenge to backing up.

Businesses are looking for technologies that can better address this complexity, with 76 percent citing the availability of a comprehensive solution across physical, virtual and cloud environments as a pertinent way to improve their disaster recovery strategy.

“Data backup and recovery is absolutely essential for the financial services industry,” commented Seth Goodling, Virtualization Practice Manager at Acronis. “These businesses are dealing with enormous amounts of sensitive information every day, and any data loss or server downtime can be fatal to their business. The Acronis Disaster Recovery Index shows that financial services organizations are in need of better strategies and training, and more advanced and comprehensive technologies to improve their backup and disaster recovery capabilities, which are currently seriously inadequate.”

The 2012 Acronis Disaster Recovery Index revealed a general trend of inadequate backup and disaster recovery among U.S. SMBs in all sectors surveyed, with just slightly more than half expressing overall confidence in their disaster recovery operations.

Surprisingly, financial services organizations were even more lacking in backup and disaster recovery capabilities than many of the other sectors surveyed. Only 39 percent of financial services respondents in the U.S. were satisfied with their overall backup and disaster recovery operations, compared with an average of 51 percent across all sectors surveyed.

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. Details of how the index was calculated and where each country appears can be found here:

• Full research report
• Infographic report

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.

Acronis software is sold in more than 90 countries and available in up to 14 languages. For additional information, please visit www.acronis.com. Follow Acronis on Twitter: http://twitter.com/acronis

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