When it comes to singling out sectors that are in the forefront of disaster recovery, finance is often quoted as an example. With so much depending on the ability to recover systems and data rapidly after any incident, major banks were among the first to implement hot failover data centres for instance – as well as being among the only organisations that could afford them. At the other end of the scale, there are those that are particularly ill-equipped to deal with IT disasters. The education sector has been identified as one example, but another group falling short of the levels required could surprise you.
Evolve IP, a cloud services enterprise, found that the education sector was relatively unprepared for disasters. In the conclusions in its “2015 Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Survey”, it stated that just 26% of IT professionals in education felt “very prepared” for an IT disaster. By comparison, around 33% (one third) had experienced a major incident necessitating disaster recovery procedures. 11% of those suffered permanent IT losses. Whether lack of in-house skills, insufficient budgets or another reason was to blame was not made explicit.
The other group that may be less well-prepared in disaster recovery and business continuity is IT organisations. The Chartered Management Institute in the UK underlined this finding in a survey from 2013 to find out how many companies had DR and BC strategies in place. Not only were more than half the 750 firms surveyed without such strategies, but on average, IT organisations were even more lacking than others. This may lend further credence to the old saying that the cobbler’s children are the least well-shod. Hopefully however, whether for educational or IT organisations, there is still no truth in the saying that “those who can, do, but those who can’t, teach”.