Companies that are hit by cyber attacks face an average outage time of 50 hours or slightly over six working days, according to a recent disaster recovery report from security firm Symantec.
Its most recent report found that up to 40% of disaster recovery attempts fail due to inadequate infrastructure and meager budgets. During those attempts respondents said they did not meet recovery point objectives and recovery time objectives.
System upgrades werent any easier. According to the report, 93% of respondents said infrastructure upgrades accounted for an outage lasting more than a day.
Businesses have not yet mastered the art of managing data across [virtual] environments, leaving mission-critical applications and data unprotected, said Paul Lancaster, Symantec systems engineer director.
The study goes on to explain that 44% of data on virtual systems is not regularly backed up and only one in five respondents use replication and "failover" technologies to protect virtual environments. Respondents also indicated that 60% of virtualized servers are not covered in their disaster recovery plans. That percentage is up significantly from the 45% reported by respondents in 2009.
As a part of the report, Symantec had a series of recommendations, including treating all environments the same, along with using integrated tool sets. It also suggested simplifying data protection processes, plan and automate systems to minimize downtime, while also implementing basic technologies and processes that protect in case of an outage. Taking shortcuts, says Symantec, could have disastrous consequences.
The report was the sixth annual data recovery survey by the company. It polled 1,700 enterprises worldwide with a staff of at least 5,000 workers.
