March 5, 2004—EnvoyWorldWide, a provider of enterprise notification services, recently revealed that testing and updating existing business continuity plans and improving emergency communication capabilities are the top priorities for business continuity professionals in 2004.
These findings are the result of a survey commissioned by EnvoyWorldWide and conducted by Beacon Technology Partners, Inc. that was conducted among members of the New England Disaster Recovery Information Xchange (NEDRIX), an organization of more than 600 business continuity and disaster recovery professionals in New England and New York.
The EnvoyWorldWide survey addressed the key issues, concerns and priorities of business continuity professionals for the upcoming year.
Top priorities for 2004 include:
- Test and/or update an existing business continuity plan
- Improve emergency communication capabilities
- Improve data back-up capabilities
Top threats to business continuity in 2004 (including percent of respondents rating each as an “extreme threat”) include:
- Data security (virus, denial of service, unauthorized access) failure (56%)
- Telecommunications failure (55%)
- Power outage (49%)
Among the most significant trends emerging from the survey is an increased focus on communications as an integral part of business continuity initiatives. This trend is supported by recommendations recently made to business continuity professionals in Gartner’s Action.
Recommendations for 2004 include:
- Invest in emergency communications services that will enable you to notify large numbers of people immediately following the disaster and with ongoing event updates.
- Specify multiple redundant notification and communications channels in your incident response plan.
- Establish responsibility and a plan of action for communicating event status to customers, suppliers and trading partners to ensure continued confidence and support during and after the event.
Mimicking the above-outlined emphasis on communications, the survey found that improving emergency communication capabilities ranked second only to enhancing business continuity plans as a priority in 2004. Survey results also indicate that a third of the respondents without a notification system in place today plan to implement one this year.
Landline and wireless telephones are seen as the most important communications devices for business continuity professionals, followed by email and two-way pagers. Top rated features of a crisis notification service were found to be the ability to initiate outbound messages by telephone, retrieve messages that were missed, and track message delivery in real time.
The survey further indicated that only 16% of companies test their business continuity plans more than twice per year, with 10% reporting that they test their plans less than once a year.
Median allocation of IT budgets to business continuity initiatives was found to be 3.5%.
A comprehensive report of survey results is available upon request. For more information, contact EnvoyWorldWide.
