A survey of 1,125 IT workers in full or part-time employment, carried out by technology services provider, Probrand.co.uk, has revealed 24 percent of UK SMEs do not have an IT disaster recovery plan in place. Yet, 80 percent of businesses who suffered a significant incident failed within 18 months.

Effective disaster recovery plans ensure businesses can get back up and running in the shortest possible time in the event of a natural or human-induced disaster.

Of those workers who are employed at a business that does have a disaster recovery plan in place, 54 percent revealed that it is not regularly tested - a practice that would identify and fix any potential flaws in their DR process.

More than 33 percent of IT workers claim that their company’s disaster recovery plan has never been tested during their employment.

Worryingly, the data shows almost eight percent of UK businesses do not have automated file backups in place. .

 Probrand marketing director Matt Royle said: “Nearly a quarter of SME’s don’t have a disaster recovery plan in place. This figure represents just under 1.4 million UK businesses who, in a worst-case scenario, are at serious risk of failing due to insufficient disaster recovery plans that include simple data backup and recovery.

“It’s imperative for businesses to have and test a DR plan, as this ensures they are able to get back to business after a disaster quickly and efficiently. For example, if an e-commerce company was hit by a catastrophic fire, flood, or cyber-attack, they could potentially lose all of their electronic data and files. With no disaster recovery plan that includes infrastructure to backup and recover business-critical data or facilities to access it remotely, the business is rendered inoperable.”

Royle said: “It’s also shocking to see just how many businesses have a disaster recovery plan in place but, never test it (or only test it on rare occasions). This inertia leaves companies open to potential risk, as testing may flag any issues or flaws within the DR process before it’s needed in a real-world scenario. The message to business leaders get a DR plan in place and test, test, test!”