ATT Study confirms DRJ and Forrester results

The following study announcements were found clogging my inbox on Friday...

Survey finds most businesses prepared for disasters Bizjournals.com - Charlotte, NC, USA The survey found that 77 percent of Seattle and Portland executives indicate their companies have a business continuity plan.

AT&T 2008 Business Continuity Study Continuity Central (press release) - Huddersfield, UK AT&T has published the results of its latest annual survey of business continuity practices in US organizations. The 2008 survey is the seventh such survey...

AT&T Study: One in Five US Businesses Does Not Have a Business ...Converge Network Digest - USA For the seventh consecutive year, AT&T's Business Continuity Study surveyed IT executives from companies throughout the United States that have at least $25...

Reading just these excerpts, it took me a moment or two before I realized that they were all describing the same AT&T study.

These particular reports are a little light as far as presenting the specific results from the AT&T survey, but still very timely considering the topic of my last post. The consensus of these interpretations of this AT&T study seems to be that 80% of companies have a Business Continuity plan. 59% of the respondents have updated their plan within the last 12 months, but fewer (46 percent) have had the plans fully tested during the same time period.

Using these numbers in place of the percentages from the DRJ/Forrester study referenced in the previous post, we end up with a set of calculations that look something like this:

80% of the companies have a Business Continuity Plan.
59% of the companies update their plan at least once a year. This means that (.80 * .59 = 47%) 47% of the companies have a plan that is updated at least once a year.
46% of the companies actually test their recovery plans at least once a year. This indicates that (.46 * .47 = 22%) 22% of the companies have a plan, update and test it at least once a year.

This result isn't too bad, I guess, but it doesn't incorporate the result from the Gartner study that only 28% of the planned tests actually are successful and meet all of their objectives. If we apply this calculation to the results of the AT&T study, we find that:

(.28 * .22 = 6%) Only six percent of the surveyed companies can be expected to have successful Business Continuity exercises that meet all of their business requirements.

This is discouraging news indeed.