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More Than 25 Percent of U.S. Companies Are Unprepared for Man-Made or Natural Disasters
June 27, 2006 - An AT&T Inc. national study on business continuity and disaster recovery reveals that 28 percent of U.S.-based companies do not have adequate plans in place to cope with natural or other potential disasters.
Despite the devastating effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, nearly half of the 1,000 companies polled by AT&T also said that they do not take specific protective actions even when state or federal governments issue warnings for an impending disaster, such as severe weather.
For those companies hit with recent disasters, nine percent indicated that it cost about $500,000 a day or more in repairs and loss of business, which translates to a loss of $2.5 million a week, if normal business operations cannot be restored.
For the fifth consecutive year, AT&T has polled chief information officers and other senior IT executives at companies throughout the United States with more than $10 million in annual revenue for their views on disaster planning/business continuity trends.
Key findings from AT&T’s 2006 Business Continuity Study:
Nearly 30 percent of those surveyed said that their company has suffered from a disaster.
Eighty-one percent of executives surveyed say that cyber security is part of their overall business continuity plan in 2006, up from 75 percent in 2005.
Eight out of 10 companies that do have a business continuity plan have updated it in the past 12 months, including 48 percent that say that it has been updated in the past six months.
Of those companies with business continuity plans in place, 40 percent say that they have not tested their plan in the past 12 months.
“It’s evident that for some companies, the various events of the past year have been a real wake-up call,” says Mark Keiffer, chief marketing officer, business, AT&T. “That’s the good news. But it’s surprising how many companies are still putting their businesses and future at risk by not adequately planning for the next hurricane, earthquake or cyber-security hit.”
Of the 10 U.S. markets surveyed, not surprisingly the cities along the coast, such as Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Washington, D.C., were among the most prepared and put business continuity planning as a high priority. Interestingly, the study also found that despite Chicago’s relative immunity to natural disasters compared with other markets and its low percentage of businesses that have experienced a disaster (20 percent), 85 percent of Chicago companies say they have taken actions to reduce business interruptions in the future. On the other hand, Detroit, St. Louis and Seattle were the least prepared cities when it comes to business continuity planning.
— AT&T