Symantec Study Emphasizes Need for Indian SMBs to Build Disaster Recovery Strategies

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New Delhi: Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) today announced the India findings of its annual 2009 Global SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey. The report reflects the attitudes and practices of small- and mid-sized businesses (SMB) and their customers toward technology disaster preparedness. It also throws light on a large discrepancy between how SMBs perceive their disaster readiness and their actual level of preparedness. The report indicates that natural disasters, virus attacks, malicious employee behavior, and changes in IT infrastructure are key drivers for Disaster Recovery adoption in India.

It has been observed that in around 42 percent SMBs the onus of data protection and recovery lies with IT departments. The growing awareness, need, and importance of disaster planning have led to owners and senior executives (39 percent) actively participate in its management and execution.

“A startling fact is that though SMBs are well aware about outages and their impact, however, it hasn’t materialized into their preparedness,” said Ajay Verma, Director, Channels and Alliances, Symantec India. “While no one wants a disaster to occur, the reality is that they happen and rather than continuing to be unprepared, companies need to take simple proactive steps to protect their information. As companies communicate their preparedness plans to their customers, they strengthen those relationships and become more trusted partners.”

Confidence High Regarding Preparedness

The findings show that SMBs are confident in their disaster preparedness plans. 73 percent of respondents say they are somewhat/very satisfied with their disaster plans, and a 34 percent say they feel somewhat/very protected in case a disaster strikes.

Reality Shows Confidence Unwarranted

However, the practices of SMBs reveal that this confidence is unwarranted. The average SMB has experienced three outages within the past 12 months, with the leading causes being virus or hacker attacks, power outages or natural disasters. This is alarming as almost half report they do not yet have a plan to deal with such disruptions. This SMB downtime costs their customers tens of thousands of rupees each year due to which the SMBs can -- and often do -- lose business as a direct result of being unprepared for disasters.

The survey found that only 18 percent SMBs back up daily and an average SMB backs up only 50 percent of their company and customer data on a daily basis.

Customers Significantly Impacted By Downtime