Smaller businesses are focusing on business continuity planning because it is an issue that is well publicised.

Lee Tricker, the director of insurance management group Thomas Miller, recognised the importance of business continuity, but said that there are other problems that need to be addressed to.

"When [SMEs are] looking at mitigating risks, they do tend to look at business continuity planning," he said.

"Obviously it's a very effective risk control, and it's also quite a well publicised one as well. So there is a tendency that when you look at small businesses and risk profiles of small businesses, there's a certain number of 'stock' things that they would do."

He said that sometimes SMEs neglect to do other things that do not have such well publicised solutions.

Research from Experian Business Strategies and Harris Interactive found that only 32 per cent of businesses in the UK are prepared for a loss of key suppliers, and 34 per cent for a loss of key customers.

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