Disaster recovery planning: A New Zealand perspective

Abstract

Disaster recovery planning is a cyclic process which has the goal of maintaining the availability of the information infrastructure, even in the event of a disaster. It is well documented that disaster recovery planning is important for organisations. It is, however, unclear if the business community is aware of this. As a result there is limited information on the acceptance of disaster recovery planning outside of the academic opinion, and even less within the New Zealand business community. This study attempts to remedy that, as it seeks to describe the state and opinions of disaster recovery planning within New Zealand.

The study takes the form of a descriptive questionnaire which was delivered to 750 organisations, both privately owned companies and government departments were surveyed. The survey questioned organisations on three main categories pertaining to disaster recovery planning: cost of downtime, perceived importance of disaster recovery planning, and the state of disaster recovery planning within the organisation.

It was found that New Zealand companies are better prepared than their American counterparts, with 75% of respondents having a disaster recovery plan. It was found that within New Zealand the perceived importance of disaster recovery planning is very high, this bodes well for the countries disaster preparedness.