Over half of the respondents had a skilled person manually performing back-ups every day. Despite this, their efforts could be in vain, with 50% of those who backed up with tape admitting that they did not consistently ‘verify’ their tape. This means that no-one would know if the process had corrupted in any way, rendering the back-up useless. 28% of the respondents said that they would rely on an employee taking the data home with them, while 19% left the data close to their computers. So while businesses are prepared to back-up, the way in which the data is stored is the weakest link in their disaster recovery plan.

“Given the recent publicity surrounding back-up and disaster recovery, you would think that there would be more people taking this issue seriously” comments Marcie Terman, Business Development Director at DataFort. “However the results of our survey indicate that only 18% have a comprehensive and secure back-up plan. 40% of companies are in the extreme risk category, with either no back-ups or back-ups that would not protect them adequately. If these companies were to suffer data loss as a result of a virus, technical failure, fire, flood or theft or other incident, the future of the business would be in jeopardy”

“The results of our research also show that businesses are relying on outdated back-up techniques that may be creating unnecessary workload for their users. The most effective solutions tend to be those that provide data security as an automated service, saving time and money” continues Terman. “Our software does just this - automatically gathering and encrypting the data and transferring it via an Internet connection to a secure data centre, all at a click of a button. So, contrary to the respondents in our survey, back-up need not be a headache with the right technology in place.”