2012 Disaster Recovery Index Reveals 68 Percent of U.S.
Financial Services Organizations Lack Confidence in Backup
and Disaster Recovery Capabilities
WOBURN, MA, APRIL 13, 2012 - According to the 2012
Acronis Disaster Recovery Index, small and medium sized businesses
(SMBs) in the U.S. financial services sector are stumbling when it
comes to backup and disaster recovery preparedness. With 65 percent
expressing a lack of confidence in their IT personnel to execute
data recovery operations in the event of a disaster, and only a
third believing they could recover quickly in the event of system
downtime, it is clear that a serious gap in backup and disaster
recovery planning exists within the financial services sector. This
gap is so serious, in fact, that 45 percent of U.S. financial
services SMBs surveyed said downtime can cost them at least a
quarter of a million dollars a year.
Respondents cited several key challenges to implementing a
proper backup and disaster recovery approach. Only 36 percent
believe they have ample resources, and only 32 percent believe they
have adequate technologies to execute effective backup and disaster
recovery. Additionally, a mere 38 percent felt they had sufficient
support from their executives.
Keeping up with IT developments was also a major issue, with 68
percent of financial services organizations seeing the increasing
complexity of infrastructure across physical, virtual and cloud
platforms as their greatest challenge to backing up. Businesses are
looking for technologies that can better address this complexity,
with 76 percent citing the availability of a comprehensive solution
across physical, virtual and cloud environments as a pertinent way
to improve their disaster recovery strategy.
"Data backup and recovery is absolutely essential for the
financial services industry," commented Seth Goodling,
Virtualization Practice Manager at Acronis. "These businesses are
dealing with enormous amounts of sensitive information every day,
and any data loss or server downtime can be fatal to their
business. The Acronis Disaster Recovery Index shows that financial
services organizations are in need of better strategies and
training, and more advanced and comprehensive technologies to
improve their backup and disaster recovery capabilities, which are
currently seriously inadequate."
The 2012 Acronis Disaster Recovery Index revealed a general
trend of inadequate backup and disaster recovery among U.S. SMBs in
all sectors surveyed, with just slightly more than half expressing
overall confidence in their disaster recovery operations.
Surprisingly, financial services organizations were even more
lacking in backup and disaster recovery capabilities than many of
the other sectors surveyed. Only 39 percent of financial services
respondents in the U.S. were satisfied with their overall backup
and disaster recovery operations, compared with an average of 51
percent across all sectors surveyed.
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:
About Acronis:
Acronis is a leader in AI-native cyber protection, unifying data protection, cybersecurity, IT operations and hybrid infrastructure to deliver business continuity, security and compliance with less cost and complexity. More than 21,000 service providers trust Acronis to protect over 750,000 businesses in 150 countries. Acronis is headquartered in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. For more information, visit www.acronis.com.