Symantec’s 2011 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey measured the attitudes and practices of small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and their customers toward disaster preparedness. The survey findings show that though SMBs are at risk, they are still not making disaster preparedness a priority until they experience a disaster or data loss. The data also reveals that the cost of not being prepared is high, putting an SMB at risk of going out of business.
2. Methodology
• Applied Research performed survey
• 1288 SMBs worldwide
• 552 customers of SMBs
• 5 to 1,000 employees
• Cross-industry
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3. Key Findings
• Despite warnings, most SMBs still not prepared for disaster
• SMBs are at risk
• SMBs don’t act until it’s too late
• Not being prepared can have a big negative financial impact
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5. SMBs still not taking disaster preparedness seriously
• 50% don’t have a plan
– 14% have no plans to create a plan
– 36% intend to create a plan in the future
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6. Why they don’t have a plan
• 52% don’t think computer systems are critical to business
• 41% say it never occurred to them
• 40% say DP not a priority
• 19% lack skills/qualified personnel
• 9% lack resources
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8. SMBs are at risk
• 65% live in regions susceptible to natural disasters
• The typical SMB surveyed experienced 6 outages last year
• Top reasons for downtime:
– Cyberattacks
– Power outages
– Natural disasters
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9. SMB Information is not protected
• Backups are inconsistent
– Half only backup 60% of data
– Less than half back up data weekly or more frequently
– Only 23% back up daily
• Backups are incomplete—key data not always backed up
– 31% don’t back up email
– 21% don’t back up application data
– 17% don’t back up customer data
• Disaster would cause information loss
– 44% would lose at least 40% of their data
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11. SMBs don’t act until it’s too late
• Half of SMBs implemented a plan due to an outage and/or data
loss
• 52% of SMBs with a plan only implemented it within the last six
months
• Only 28% have tested a recovery plan
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13. Not being prepared can have a negative impact
• Outages are expensive: $12,500 per day
• It could put an SMB out of business—44% of SMB customers
have had an SMB vendor temporarily shut down due to a
disaster
• Customers will suffer financially
– SMB outages cost SMB customers $10,000 per day
– 29% of SMB customers lost “some” or “a lot of” data as a result of
disasters impacting their SMB vendors
• Customers will leave
– 54% of customers have switched SMB vendors due to unreliable
computing systems
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15. Recommendations
• Don’t wait until it’s too late to create a plan
• Protect your information completely
• Get employees involved
• Test frequently
• Review your plan
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