Recent talk of a possible swine flu pandemic has highlighted the importance of having business continuity management systems up to date, such as those provided by online backup and data recovery, a major firm has stated.

This week, Gartner said that this served as a wake-up call to both healthcare and IT industries, with the latter being told to take such news as a reason to check up on current disaster recovery plans.

Roberta Witty, a research vice-president at the organisation, stated that enterprises using IT systems in any sector or region need to address online backup systems and fill in any elements that are missing by the end of the week.

She continued: "Starting today IT managers should meet with senior executives, line-of-business managers and other high-level decision-makers to answer any questions and be made aware of the seriousness of this pandemic preparation."

Gartner's headquarters are in Stamford, Connecticut, with 4,000 associated and 1,200 research analysts working for the advisory firm.

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.