Climate change could pose a major threat to business operations over the next ten year, a new business continuity survey has found.

The study, conducted by the organisers of the Business Continuity Expo 2008, found that 87 per cent of respondents felt that global warming is the biggest threat to their businesses.

Martin Caddick, leader of business continuity management at risk advisor Marsh, said: "Climate change and energy risk consistently rank among the biggest challenges facing global businesses in 2008.

"While the majority of firms surveyed have accurately identified the major risks that could affect their businesses, fewer seem to be successful in tackling them head on."

He added that this lack of preparedness is a "major issue" for European firms.

Earlier this week, the government warned that UK firms are over reliant on the internet and should make business continuity plans in order to deal with a prolonged outage.

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