An IT systems failure lasting more than seven days would be too much for most companies to overcome, it has been suggested.

Firms have been reminded of their increasing reliance on IT systems by the Gartner report which surveyed 359 risk management professionals from the UK, US and Canada.

Nearly 60 per cent of those interviewed expressed doubt over the future of their company if faced with systems outage of more than seven days as they had not planned beyond a week.

And furthermore most of respondents admitted they had focused on internal IT disruptions rather than outside influences, such as last summer's flooding across the UK.

"If you start looking at some of the events we've [experienced] over the last few years, companies must plan for events that actually take much longer to recover from," said Gartner analyst Roberta Witty.

"This is an issue [businesses] have to deal with. It's in front of everyone's face right now."

Ms Witty highlighted that threats to firms now include terrorism, pandemics, civil unrest or natural disasters, as well as tech-based problems such as service provider outages.

But Gartner's figures found that preparations were not at an equal stage for each of these potential events, with some 77 per cent of companies having a plan of action to bring their business back online after a fire-related disaster, but only 29 per cent with pandemic recovery plans prepared.