BCI Survey Reveals Business is Unprepared

Research by the Business Continuity Institute reveals that 20% of businesses still do not have disaster recovery plans, despite respondents believing that terrorism, fire and flood present significant threats to their business operations.

Andy Tomkinson of the BCI described the results of a new survey to be released to the public during the upcoming Business Continuity Awareness Week, saying, "The BCI awareness survey provides a timely reminder that more needs to be done to help business prepare for disruption. It is a wake up call for Government and business to come together and highlight what needs to be done, to prepare for better disaster recovery and business continuity planning."

A preview of the highlights of this major survey were released to the media:

The Business Continuity Institute’s (BCI) awareness survey reveals that:

• Outside of the finance industry, many large business’ continuity plans are not as comprehensive as they need to be.

• Businesses believed that the most significant threat to their operations are terrorism, fire and flood risk.

• Despite firms having physical disaster recovery plans, a significant minority had no plans for less serious disruptions such as unavailability of key staff, server downtime and supplier failure; the most likely of recovery events to occur in the workplace.

• 60% of business do not test their disaster/business continuity plans annually.

The BCI business continuity awareness survey provides for the first time a representative survey of UK business, providing a detailed insight into the differences in attitudes to business continuity planning between small, medium and large firms.

The BCI exists to improve standards of professionalism and provide assistance to managers responsible for business continuity/disaster recovery in organisations. The BCI’s members come from a diverse field of industry that includes banks, insurers, retailers, and IT firms.

The full results of the BCI research will be announced at the 2005 Business Continuity Risk Management Expo held in London on 16 & 17 March 2005. The event, part of the annual BCI ‘Awareness Week 2005’, will assemble the largest gathering of Business Continuity decision makers and solutions providers in Europe and worldwide in the Excel Exhibition Centre, Docklands in London.

If you're interested in preparing your company or government organisation, or making your business colleagues more aware of the need for preparedness, you might want to get the colour poster that is available as a pdf download from the website of the Business Continuity Institute, where you can also get a free pocket-sized version of their Good Practice Guidelines 2005.