Over two-thirds of firms in Ireland do not have a comprehensive disaster recovery plan in place, it has been revealed.

Siliconrepublic.com reports the findings of a survey conducted by internet service provider Strencom which discovered that 67 per cent of firms surveyed had not fully account for the possibility of a major systems outage.

Speaking to the website, the IT firm's managing director, Tim Murphy said: "It is surprising that such a high number of companies have been slow-paced regarding disaster recovery planning, particularly given their complete dependence on access to data to keep the business live."

He added that the best disaster recovery plan is one that is regularly tested and updated.

Mr Murphy concluded by saying that firms should look to back up critical data and decentralise IT operation to help them cope if the worst happened.

Yesterday housing association The Peabody Trust explained how an effective disaster recovery plan allowed it to continue operating smoothly after a fire damaged its IT network.

New research from Connect found that, on average, it takes businesses that use backup tapes take 11.6 hours to retrieve and restore files. Connect is now recommending that SMEs switch to www.totalrecall.co.uk