IT systems over the past decade have become more hardened in terms of recovery time and recovery point objectives (RTOs and RPOs), or the time it takes to get systems back on line and minimizing the amount of data lost during that time. Over the past decade, RTOs have dropped from 48 hours to four or five hours in many cases, he said.

"The finance guys are probably some of the most aggressive as far as having disaster recovery capabilities, both in how quickly they can recover as well as ensuring they're mitigating risk," he added.

In many case, banks and brokerages will have two data centers in relatively close proximity -- 20 or 30 miles apart -- for business continuity where they replicate data in real time between the two to ensure if one goes down, the other can still operate. Then, they'll have a third disaster recovery site to ensure a regional disaster will still not cripple their operations, Knox said.

Knox said virtualization has had a lot to do with better RPOs and RTOs with regard to x86 server infrastructures in larger companies, and for small- to medium-sized businesses, SaaS cloud services have allowed for better disaster recovery planning than at any time in history.

"Are there going to be companies where things do happen? Of course, if a huge regional disaster occurs. Relatively speaking they're pretty well prepared," Knox said.