Disaster Recovery planning could be hampered by incoherent management and security concerns, one expert warns.

Writing for computerworld.com, Jon Espenschied explained that - due to the potentially sensitive nature of the data involved - disaster recovery and business continuity planning can sometimes end up being dealt with as a security issue.

He said: "The result is usually either a skimpy collection of procedures without a solid foundation in risk assessment, or a long-winded tome that overreaches the high-level governance and compliance requirements that can be predicted by IT."

Mr Espenschied said that in both these cases any plan could do "more harm than good".

He recommended that anyone who was struggling to implement an effective disaster recovery plan should seek out all the help they can get, be it from magazines or external experts.

Last month brewers Carlsberg installed a new data recovery system that it said would provide the company with a number of benefits, including the ability to recover quickly after any problems.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were 'guaranteed response times' and 'allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues'.