A new study indicates that companies should invest more in disaster recovery plans, as the expectations for always-on access to IT systems increases.

IDG Research questioned 215 senior managers and found that well over half (61 per cent) indicated that they are either not very, not at all, or only somewhat confident in how prepared their company is for a disaster.

Less than half (46 per cent) say their company has a recovery time objective (RTO) of less than 12 hours, with a quarter believing that these windows will decrease still further in the coming year.

The survey also indicated that companies are generally not doing enough to test their disaster recovery processes. In today's business climate firms face almost constant change in mission-critical systems and need to make sure their continuity plans are not outdated.

Research for Connect in 2007 found that 88 per cent of UK businesses were interested in Disaster Recovery systems primarily to protect their critical applications and data