Disaster Recovery
I recently read an article on Computerworld that talked about the possibility of the Internet going down (and discussed it briefly). Not a simple outage, but a major loss of access effecting a significant audience caused by a malicious attacker, terrorist, or act of God. The Business Roundtable, a Washington-based public policy advocacy group comprised of CEOs of large U.S. companies, has suggested that in the next 10 years there is a 10% - 20% chance that a significant outage will occur. Are you prepared?
A recent survey suggests that most businesses are not prepared for an 8-day (or more) outage; in a 2007 survey of IT professionals, 60% indicated that their business continuity plans are limited to 7-days or less. Ignoring outages that can be attributed to individuals or groups, like malicious code or terrorist efforts, in recent years we’ve seen events like Hurricane Katrina and a major power outage that covered a great portion of Eastern North America.
Until recently, I was guilty of being less than prepared for my blog going down - just look at the difficulties I experienced in the last month! It’s much easier for me to be prepared than most companies, and I would consider myself to be more savy in the area than most, too. Statistics show that companies unable to quickly manoever and adapt in the face of a disaster (I believe the statistic suggests within a 1 to 2-week period) are likely to be out of business within a 1 to 2-year period. Statistics also show that 29% of organizations now have pandemic recovery measures in place. Put another way, 7 out of 10 companies are not prepared and would likely be out of business if faced with a disaster. Which statistic is your company going to be?