Disaster recovery success depends on a realistic and well understood set of objectives based on business needs, it is suggested.

Firms must plan and prepare all aspects of disaster recovery, from business impact analysis and understanding risks, to prioritising applications and data for recoverability, states a ZDNet blog.

"The dynamic nature of IT requires continuous review and updates of the process and the plan. It must be part of the day-to-day operations," the news source continues.

It gives top ten tips for disaster recovery, the first being the need to match capabilities to expectations and link business and IT, ensuring planning for disaster recovery does not become a burden.

The news provider goes on to advise that any disaster recovery plan represent all functional areas within IT prior to, during and after a disaster and remain up-to-date with any IT changes or upgrades.

As well as this, it urges firms to test their disaster recovery plans and define who is responsible for what.

Last month, Symantec warned that firms are putting themselves at risk by not testing disaster recovery plan.

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.