Any business operating with computers as a central resource should never turn away from data recovery or similar ideas involving online backup drives, it has been stated.

Kelly Lipp, the chief technology officer and vice-president of manufacturing at STORServer, said that if a company did not implement a comprehensive data recovery system, they were open to losing more than just information but also a lot of potential revenue.

She noted that although many disasters may affect hundreds of businesses across the world on a daily basis, the ones that are protected are in the best position to bounce back with little or no problem.

Ms Lipp asserted that people should imagine what their small business in IT would do should a disaster hit their enterprise.

She continued: "Simply bringing the organisation's stakeholders into a room and brainstorming the types of disasters that might happen and working through responses to them would go a long way."

According to Wougnet, people need to consider whether or not they are able to operate without technology for a day and whether or not it was right to skimp on disaster recovery investments in the current climate.

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 for SMEs to ensure they can survive any disaster.