Best practices in IT disaster recovery planning among US banks

In a recent study, it was found that as many as 60% of US enterprises don't have IT disaster recovery plans. The majority of IT disaster recovery planning guides are either inconsistent or so complicated that the average IT department can't commit the resources to completing them. In either case, the results are the same: the organization is not prepared to cope with IT-related disasters. This study reports on the IT DR planning practices of 154 banks in the United States. Surprisingly, neither IT budget nor IT department size were found to be common denominators among organizations with adequate IT disaster recovery plans. The results of the study indicate that well-prepared firms perform some variation of the following seven activities: conduct IT service analysis, provide employee training, select methods of IT disaster identification and notification, define backup procedures, determine offsite storage locations, determine recovery procedures, and perform ongoing maintenance.