Disaster Recovery Planning Shifts Focus from IT to Pandemic Preparation

As the H1N1 virus and severe weather-related events have shifted disaster recovery planning emphasis, corporate executives and business continuity professionals are prioritizing pandemic planning and disaster recovery efforts over IT and data security threats. Despite most companies still lacking adequate plans to deal with cyber attacks, data breaches, or data center failures, the survey conducted by Varolii Corporation reveals a significant shift in focus.

Key Takeaways:

• In 2009, pandemic threats ranked as the top threat to organizations, with 55% of respondents saying it's either a serious or extreme threat.
• Threats focused on data security and telecom failure/power outage, which were the top threats in 2008, still ranked high in 2009 but decreased from 39% to 52% for natural disaster threats.
• Only 60% of companies have a plan to deal with data center disruptions, and only 53% say they are prepared for data breaches.
• Less than half (46%) say they are prepared for cyber attacks.
• Emergency communication across multiple channels, including text messaging, is becoming more pervasive, with 80-90% of respondents able to contact recipients via landline, mobile phone, or email in a crisis.
• Fifty-three percent reported using text messaging to communicate during emergencies.
• More companies are targeting all employees for crisis communications, rather than just first responders or company executives, with 81% having communication plans to reach all employees.
• Despite the economic crisis, disaster recovery and emergency preparedness are an emerging priority for corporate executives, with the percentage of companies in which executives are highly involved and responsible for overall preparedness planning and execution climbing from 35% in 2007 to 47% in 2009.
• Executive management is now the most prevalent group on emergency preparedness planning teams, rising to 65%, while the percentage of IT representatives has decreased from 70% in 2008 to 55% in 2009.

Statistics:

• 55% of respondents said pandemic threats are either a serious or extreme threat in 2009.
• 52% of respondents ranked natural disaster threats as serious or extreme in 2009.
• Only 60% of companies have a plan to deal with data center disruptions.
• Only 53% of companies say they are prepared for data breaches.
• Only 46% of companies say they are prepared for cyber attacks.
• 81% of companies have communication plans to reach all employees.
• 65% of companies have executive management on emergency preparedness planning teams.
• 55% of companies have IT representatives on emergency preparedness planning teams.

Sources:

• Varolii Corporation, 2009-2010 Preparedness, Security and Crisis Communications Study
• Honeywell, emergency notification services
• Bioterrorism Week editors, staff and other reports
• NewsRx.com, copyright 2010