Businesses More Prepared for Calamity

June 13, 2007: Following its recent study of American businesses, AT&T has released the results of a similar survey in the UK, finding that London businesses see cybersecurity and business continuity as a priority.

Canvassing 100 IT executives from companies with at least US$25 million (AU$29.6M) in revenue, AT&T found that eight out of 10 London-based IT executives claim they have business continuity plans in place, and more than 70 percent have updated these plans in the last 12 months. Further to this, over 50 percent of respondents claimed to have tested their plans over this period to ensure reliability.

The study also found that while planning for the worst most IT executives (three our of four) have included cybersecurity as part of their overall business continuity plans, while over 50 percent see it as a key concern. 62 percent believe viruses and worms pose the greatest threat to their organisations, while 39 percent are concerned with hackers.

While the study found that almost half (46 percent) of respondents indicated their organisations have always had a business continuity plan, 30 percent said that planning had only become a priority recently due to high-profile disasters, security breaches and terrorism.

When it comes to protection, measures taken by companies in London include Internet security measures (81 percent), backup and restore procedures (80 percent), employee education (76 percent), off-site storage and recovery of backup data (76 percent), redundant servers and/or backup sites (67 percent), protection against DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks (67 percent) and the use of service providers for outsourcing (49 percent).

Actions that London companies have taken when it comes to cybersecurity include educating employees (69 percent), defining corporate security policies (67 percent) and contracting with an outside service provider to manage security (31 percent).

“It is extremely encouraging to learn that the majority of organisations that we talked to in London have business-continuity plans in place and review and test them,” said John Slamecka, vice president of, AT&T Europe, Middle East & Africa. “I am not that surprised to see that cybersecurity is top of mind. We find that this is a common concern for our customers around the world.”

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