Virtual backup practices are found worryingly lacking
SCHAFFHAUSEN, Switzerland, 12 April 2012 - According to the Acronis Global Disaster Recovery Index 2012, the financial services sector has pushed disaster recovery to the top of its IT agenda as a result of the wide spread natural disasters of 2011. However, compliance, security and virtual server protection remain big concerns for the industry.
The Acronis survey of almost 6,000 small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) in 18 countries showed that 60% of financial services globally implemented a full-scale business continuity plan in 2011. As a result, the financial services sector is the most confident industry in its backup and disaster recovery processes. On average, the sector spends 12% of its overall IT budget on disaster recovery.
Despite this move towards more stringent processes, virtual backup practices lack with a fifth (19%) of financial organisations stating they don't back up their virtual servers as often as their physical ones. And over half (55%) back up their virtual servers infrequently (on a weekly, monthly or irregular basis). This is surprising when most stated that the monetary value of data on their virtual servers is equal to that held on their physical ones. With trust being imperative in this industry, it's vital that organisations treat their virtual servers with the same care as their physical servers.
IT mangers within financial service organisations are also highly concerned about the security risks of backing up data to the cloud, with 47% citing security as the key barrier to entry. Lack of confidence in cloud providers as well as non-compliance with data protection laws are also concerns. As a consequence, 45% of companies are relying on taking a tape or disk offsite at the end of each day as their offsite disaster recovery strategy.
The finance industry is, however, the most likely to consolidate the number of tools it is using for disaster recovery, with 44% of IT managers stating that they only use one solution. Such consolidation can save costs, reduce risk and increase efficiency. In fact, 77% of those surveyed stated that the availability of one disaster recovery solution for physical, virtual and cloud environments would be the best way to improve their disaster recovery.
"IT managers within financial services state that the biggest threat to their disaster recovery strategy is complacency. Because they have not experienced data loss before, they don't see it as a threat," said David Blackman, General Manager Northern Europe and MEA, Acronis. "While the industry's tactics are sound on paper, it needs to wake up and realise that sometimes even Barcelona lose."
Notes to the editor:
The survey was conducted by the Ponemon Institute across 18 countries in September and October 2011. Over 6,000 IT practitioners were surveyed in small- to mid-market organisations with no more than 1,000 seats. Details of how the index was calculated and where each country appears can be found here:
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About Acronis:
Acronis is a global cyber protection company that provides natively integrated cybersecurity, data protection, and endpoint management for managed service providers (MSPs), small and medium businesses (SMBs), and enterprise IT departments. Acronis solutions are highly efficient and designed to identify, prevent, detect, respond, remediate, and recover from modern cyberthreats with minimal downtime, ensuring data integrity and business continuity. Acronis offers the most comprehensive security solution on the market for MSPs with its unique ability to meet the needs of diverse and distributed IT environments.
A Swiss company founded in Singapore in 2003, Acronis has 15 offices worldwide and employees in 50+ countries. Acronis Cyber Protect is available in 26 languages in 150 countries and is used by over 20,000 service providers to protect over 750,000 businesses. Learn more at www.acronis.com.