Both virtual and physical breaches have been identified as key factors driving Indian enterprises to reassess their DR strategy. While a whopping 74 percent of the respondents claimed the rampant increase in virus attacks prompted them to revisit their DR plan, 68 percent are going in for a reevaluation to avoid data loss incidents and 54 percent to prevent accidental or malicious employee behavior. Furthermore, continuous technological advancements such as virtualization and enterprise mobility have independently led 60 percent to re-examine their DR strategy on an ongoing basis.
"Disaster Recovery planning is not limited to virus attacks or natural calamities but various supplementary factors that hinder seamless business operations. Enterprises should identify, classify and prioritize critical assets for disaster prevention, detection, response, recovery and mitigation," said Anand Naik, director, Systems Engineering, Symantec Corporation.
"IT systems in enterprises are the backbone for business continuity and form an important aspect of DR planning. Going beyond, the right DR approach should consist of a combination of people, processes and technology," he added.
Key Findings:
Challenges in disaster recovery testing
The survey points out that 22 percent of Indian enterprises conduct full scenario DR tests only once a year or less because of perceived fear of business disruption and lack of resources to conduct tests. Reasons cited include: lack of staff availability (56 percent), disruption to employees (58 percent), budgetary issues (44 percent) and disruption to customers (46 percent). In addition, 32 percent admit DR testing could affect sales and revenue.
Impact of disaster incidents on businesses
Disaster incidents increasingly put enterprises at risk and drastically affect business health. In fact, the repercussions could be severe and expensive if a disaster disrupts mission critical applications and services. Only 26 percent of respondents report they could achieve baseline operations within one day. Another 23 percent reported it would take a full week to achieve 100 percent normal operations. The survey found that the most feared consequences of disasters include loss of company information (76 percent), harm to their company's brand and reputation (64 percent), negative impact on overall customer loyalty (68 percent), damage to employee productivity (66 percent) and competitive standing (50 percent).
Virtualization driving reevaluation of plans
Virtualization is the major factor that is causing more than half (61 percent) of India respondents to reevaluate their DR plans. This can be attributed to the different challenges posed by virtual environments; processes for physical environments may not necessarily apply to virtual environments. In addition, legacy DR tools in virtual environments lack enterprise-class protection that enterprises require.
Human error & insufficient infrastructure result in unsuccessful DR tests
Of the surveyed enterprises, 44 percent carried out full-scenario testing on a monthly basis. However, a significant percentage (22 percent) of tests failed to meet the average time required for recovery that is 12.81 hours. Respondents also reported the top reasons why their tests failed: human error (58 percent), technology failure (40 percent), insufficient IT infrastructure (46 percent), out-of-date plans (38 percent) and inappropriate processes (38 percent).