Infosec 08: Employees lack disaster recovery skills

Three quarters of UK employees do not understand or even know their company's business plan in event of a disaster or disruption, according to BT.

Research ahead of Infosecurity 2008 this week said that even though 41 per cent of employees knew there was a business continuity plan, they did not take the time to read or fully understand it. A third did not even know there was one.

IT departments were further undermined when the same survey said that nearly a quarter of employees (22 per cent) thought that losing a mobile electronic device containing business or sensitive information wouldn't be a disaster. Not surprisingly then, 38 per cent of people who had lost a mobile electronic device admitted that it wasn't secure.

BT Global Services claimed that although information security had become a major priority for businesses, important safeguards such as a business continuity plan were still vital, the lack of which could bring businesses to their knees in a worst case scenario like an earthquake or power failure.

"As the profile of information security has increased in recent years, so businesses have become more adept at addressing strategic issues like risk management, outsourcing and security auditing," said Ray Stanton, global head of BT's business continuity.

"The worry is that at the same time they have been forgetting about the fundamentals. Many can no longer see the wood for the trees. It's time for businesses and the security industry to go back to basics," he added.

BT also challenged IT and businesses to improve other key security areas. It picked out the importance of data encryption, threat management systems to prevent denial of service attacks and the education of staff when it came to protecting corporate data.

The telecom giant was also planning to showcase a new product at Infosec. BT Business Continuity 'Quickstart' was claimed to offer organisations a quick way to understand their current level of readiness for potential downtime or disaster.

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