Local SMBs are feeling more confident than ever about their ability to backup and recover data after a disaster, but one-third still aren’t employing an offsite backup strategy, despite experiencing a year marred by flooding and cyclones.
According to the Acronis Global Disaster Recovery Index 2012, while Australian SMBs confidence about their ability to recover data after a disaster remains below average, it more than doubled in 2011, growing 136 percent.
Underlying this rise is perceived improvements about having the right resources and the technologies to recover data. Confidence in these two criteria more than doubled over the past 12 months.
Another contributing factor to the increase is that 66 percent of SMBs now check their backup and disaster recovery plans more regularly, possibly as a result of the natural disasters which hit many regions in 2011, including destructive flooding in Australia, Brazil and Thailand, deadly earthquakes in New Zealand and Turkey, storms across the United States and the devastating tsunami in Japan.
On a more local level, Acronis found Australian businesses are 36 percent more confident their backup and DR operations won’t fail during a disaster, but one-third still haven’t employed an offsite backup strategy, the same number as the year previous.
Karl Sice, Acronis’ general manager – Pacific, said the natural disasters of 2011 have acted as a catalyst for positive change when it comes to businesses testing back-up and DR operations – but the results aren’t all positive.
“…for all the positives in the survey, too many strategic-level negatives, such as failure to get executive buy-in and the use of multiple, disjointed solutions, linger when it comes to keeping the business-critical digital assets of a business secure, protected and immediately available, particularly in a hybrid world,” Sice said.
The survey also found downtime as a result of disaster-related data loss costs a business an average of US$366,363 per year – which can mean the difference between a business’ survival and closure in many cases.
Do you back-up your business data offsite? How regularly?
