Financial Times publish business continuity survey results

Article augmented by Erik C. Lund, Saragosta Group from original article appeared in Continuity Central. 

The Financial Times and Symantec Corp. just announced the results of a joint survey entitled ‘Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery.' According to the report, compliance mandates, risk requirements and market forces are substantially driving the heightened importance of business continuity planning within the financial services industry.

"Banking and financial security firms are under particular pressure when it comes to understanding business continuity, as well as related regulatory compliance requirements," said Will Speck, director of research for Financial Times. "This comprehensive survey captures the increased pressure to mitigate risk and reduce the amount, and cost, of risk capital dedicated to business continuity issues."

There is a prevailing misconception that business continuity is just about the data. The survey results underscore the need to view planning in a holistic manner, to fully assess and evaluate the people, processes and procedures that impact an organizations ability to operate in the face of planned or unplanned downtime. While heightened awareness is an important first step, it is clear that managing to regulatory compliance is not enough. A complete business continuity plan must include rigorous internal and inter-dependant testing, along with external, industry-wide preparedness testing to ensure the continuity of essential business assets."

The survey targetted key executives in the banking, financial services and telecommunications industries with one-on-one interviews with select, senior-level CIO/CTO executives in the banking and financial services fields to provide deeper insight into trends. Among the key findings are:

• Business continuity compliance requirements and recent events in the financial services sector are raising the level of attention paid to the cost and efficacy of business continuity programs. 

• Business unit leaders are becoming more engaged in business continuity management and disaster recovery, resulting in a blurring of the division between business units and IT, as individual teams see the value of working together on inter-related issues.

• Most companies report a much more significant focus on maintaining central data stores (disaster recovery), with comparably less attention paid to maintaining or restoring disrupted operations (business continuity).

• Executives responsible for business continuity reported significant gaps in overall preparedness, particularly as it relates to testing. 

• Financial assessment is also under-attended, highlighting the need to develop systems that consider the total cost of ownership (TCO) of various business continuity options.

We find the same trends in Poland. In many cases BCP is just done to meet regulatory requirements with as little effort and involvement from the organisation as possible. Thereby companies miss opportunities to understand critical inefficiencies in the organisations and improve business resiliance so that operations is not disturbed and risks are managed properly.

Saragosta Group is the leading expert on legacy transformation and infrastructure solutions in the Polish market. We provide high value counseling, solution design and implementation through a team of highly skilled and experienced Polish and International consultants that bring the best technology and business practices to our clients.

We help companies to understand their challenges and transform this into strategies and solutions that benefit business management and achieves critical competitive advantages.

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