The September 11th terrorist attacks dramatically affected many small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) as well as costing thousands of innocent lives.

Writing in Computer Weekly, John-Paul Kamath notes that more than half of the SMBs that were affected did not trade again, and the fateful day brought the issue of disaster recovery to the fore.

One of the outcomes is that companies are more aware today of the need for disaster recovery plans in order to allow for business continuity if tragedy strikes.

Bill Crichton of Hewlett-Packard stresses the need for a back-up datacentre located in a different place form the primary datacentre.

He said: "Unfortunately, there are still many businesses that have two datacentres within a central location, where a terrorist attack can render both sites unusable."

It is also crucial for firms to remember that staff need to be included in disaster recovery plans.

HSBC group crisis management head Bob Piggott said that the financial sector had learned from September 11th.

"In the UK, all our staff have a telephone number they can ring to receive an updated status message in the event of an incident," he said.