Confidence Clearly Lacking

SMBs in the U.S. are still lagging behind in their backup and disaster recovery plans. Only slightly more than 50 percent feel confident in the strategies they have in place.

According to the data, SMBs are still losing an average of $388,426 a year due to IT downtime.

Nearly 50 percent of U.S. SMBs still fear substantial downtime in the event of a disaster.

The survey found 64 percent of U.S. respondents said that the biggest contributor to downtime is human error.

The survey results showed 76 percent of U.S. respondents said the best way to improve backup and disaster recovery would be to have an integrated system that covered physical, virtual and cloud data assets.

Currently, more than half (53 percent) of the respondents use separate backup solutions for their physical and virtual environments.

Only 24 percent of U.S. respondents strongly feel that their staff is qualified to execute backup and disaster recovery operations.

As part of the survey research, 18 industrialized countries were evaluated on a scale of -5.0 to +5.0, based on levels of confidence in their backup and disaster recovery capabilities. For overall confidence in backup and disaster recovery, Germany scored highest at 2.1. Brazil had the lowest level of confidence, at -0.9. The U.S. scored slightly below average, at 0.8.

Japan had the third-highest confidence levels at a rating of 1.9 in backup and disaster recovery capabilities, despite experiencing a year of catastrophic natural disasters in 2011.

Fully 64 percent of Japanese respondents said they now test their backups more regularly in response to 2011’s natural disasters, and 57 percent have implemented a full-scale business continuity plan.