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The Institute of Risk Management (IRM) has earmarked disaster recovery as one of the most important things to the livelihood of any business, it has emerged.

In an interview Ian Fraser, the marketing manager at the IRM, stated that a disaster recovery plan was "crucial" to any size of company.

He added that training in the risk management process also helped businesses prepare for quite likely problems that their offices may face.

Mr Fraser added: "When things have gone wrong it is usually too late to make business continuity arrangements, or at best they will take longer and cost more, but all too often businesses do not survive if they haven’t prepared."

According to a recent study by Disaster Recovery Solutions, 20 per cent of companies will suffer fire, flood damage, theft, power failures, software problems or even terrorism, with 80 per cent of those without a business continuity plan failing within 13 months of restarting.

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.connect.co.uk/services/online_backup – for SMEs to ensure they can survive any disaster