Disaster Recovery More Important to IT Than It Is to Business Execs

One-third of companies have experienced a technology-related disruption in the past two years, and the most common reason for not investing in disaster recovery (DR) is because of more pressing priorities, according to a Bluelock survey highlighting the disparity between IT professionals and C-level execs on IT security and recovery issues.

The survey revealed major disconnects between company leadership and IT: While 73 percent of executives have high confidence in their company’s ability to recover systems within time objectives, that number falls to 45 percent among IT professionals.

About half of executives surveyed place a high value on protecting the business against disruption, compared with 80 percent of IT professionals, according to the survey.

About a third of executives said they consider funding for IT disaster recovery (DR) very good, but fewer than 2 in 10 (19 percent) of IT professionals said they felt the same way.

The survey found 11.5 percent of companies don’t even have a DR plan, even though 40 percent of VP- or C-level executives and 31 percent of IT professionals said a technology-related disruption has impacted their company’s ability to deliver products or solutions.

While both groups unanimously agree that protecting against technology-related disruptions is, at a minimum, moderately important, the perception persists that IT disaster recovery is too time-consuming to implement (14 percent of IT professionals and 33 percent of executives).

In addition, IT professionals place a higher value on protecting their business against technology-related disruptions than executives do—60 percent of IT pros said it was extremely important, while no VPs and C-level execs surveyed felt that strongly.

The survey also found IT professionals tend to be more optimistic than executives about their company’s inclination to protect technology against disruptions, and more than twice the percentage of execs (65 percent) said they are very confident in their DR plans compared to IT professionals (31 percent).

Executives rated themselves as being more aware of their current IT disaster recovery plan than IT professionals believed they were.

When it comes to looking for qualities in a DR vendor, 17 percent of VP- or C-level executives want an outsourced or partnership model for IT disaster recovery, compared with 29 percent of IT pros who feel the same way.

However, one area where the two groups did line up was in the search for the most commonly sought characteristic in a DR provider: dependability.