UK firms are risking a business catastrophe because of inadequate disaster recovery planning, a new survey has found.

According to the 2008 Information Security Breaches Survey (ISBS) - carried out by a consortium of firms led by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) - more than a quarter of firms have not got a disaster recovery plan in place.

It also found that, of those companies which do have a plan in place, 50 per cent have failed to test it in the last year.

Chris Potter, partner at PwC said: "The number of companies with a disaster recovery plan has gone up.

"However, experience shows that plans are only effective if regularly tested. It is a concern that only half of plans have been tested in the last year."

The report also found that 58 per cent of UK businesses would suffer significant disruption if their IT systems were unavailable for a day, a figure which rises to 70 per cent for large firms.

Last month, the government warned that UK firms are too reliant on the internet.

A recent survey for Connect found that one in ten companies has lost important data as a result of a backup failure. The company has now developed a unique online backup service - http://www.totalrecall.co.uk – for SMEs to ensure they can survive any disaster