Channel Partners' State of BC/DR Survey Finds Ransomware, Connectivity Failure Risks Drive Spending — But Most Pessimistic Over Recovery

About half, 52 percent, of IT pros say they have effective BC/DR programs. Channel pros disagree, with most saying fewer than half of their customers have effective plans. That puts the channel slightly more pessimistic, but no matter how you slice it, only half of respondents think they could recover.

For IT, the belief they can’t get the right connectivity was the No. 2 reason for a lack of a strategy. Just 13 percent of channel pros cite a lack of connectivity, indicating that we’re not educating customers on options like satellite and SD-WAN.

Ransomware is cited by channel pros as the top BC/DR driver, followed by connectivity failure. For IT pros, connectivity failure is No. 1, with ransomware in fourth place.

Fifty-nine percent of IT pros say it’s somewhat or very difficult to provide adequate connectivity at an affordable cost to remote sites to achieve BC/DR objectives; 39 percent of channel pros say the same.

Half of channel pros expect BC/DR budgets to increase somewhat. IT pros? Sixty-one percent say spending will stay level, while 29 percent expect increases. The good news: Few see spend decreasing.

Encryption use is spotty, even though the technology has advanced, key management can be had as a service — and it’s essentially a “get out of compliance jail free” card. When asked, “Is data encrypted in transit and at rest,” 39 percent of IT pros say yes, all of it; 24 percent of partners agree.

We asked how much was lost to unplanned downtime in the past 12 months, including productivity. We set $10,000 as the line between “OK, we can fix this” and “There goes the holiday party.” Eighteen percent of IT pros say they lost more than $10,000; 56 percent of partners say a customer lost more than $10,000.

Spend on BC/DR as a percentage of the IT budget, including dedicated connectivity, now and in 2018, is likely to stay flat, per IT pro respondents; 39 percent of IT pros say BC/DR gets less than 5 percent of the cash, and 61 percent expect that to continue.

Aspirational RPO and RTO metrics are not in line with reality: Seventy-six percent think it should take no more than four hours to bring mission-critical applications back online, and 70 percent say it’s acceptable to lose no more than two hours of data. But 61 percent of partners say critical data has been unrecoverable.