02 Dec 2008

Firms warned on disaster recovery responsibilities

Businesses which use disaster recovery facilities are entirely responsible for ensuring that important data is transferred correctly to the site, an expert has said.

Eric Parker, managing director at Unitrends, said that large enterprises and organisations need to ensure their data is protected and arguably, their systems too.

Disaster recovery sites provide firms with an external working environment when they are affected by a serious event.

Desks, phones, printers and a network are among the facilities provided, Mr Parker noted.

Firms could consider storing their data off-site through virtualisation technology.

According to Dot Net Solutions chief executive Dan Scarfe, data storage is more secure on cloud servers than it is on a business' own premises.

On the possible disasters that can face firms, Mr Parker said that downtime, caused by software corruption, viruses and most commonly, human error, is becoming increasingly problematic.

"Some companies are saying they cannot afford to be without critical systems for anything more than four hours," Mr Parker commented.