Businesses without a contingency plan in place such as disaster recovery may be letting themselves in for a world of pain, according to a technology expert.

Darren Thompson, the senior technical director of Europe, the Middle East and Asia at Symantec, told ComputerWeekly.com that many applications a company will run will always be mission-critical and without these, a business could flounder, particularly in the current economic climate.

As a result, an investment in disaster recovery, such as through an online data backup strategy, is key to survival should the worst happen, he added.

"What companies do not realise is the damage to their reputation and bottom line could be severe in the face of disaster," Mr Thompson continued.

"Should disaster strike and leave a company's databases, application servers and web servers out of action, it can mean a loss of £4,300 an hour."

His comments follow those of managing director of Atlanta Technology Simon Kelson, who told Fresh Business Thinking that organisations can never predict if or when a disaster will occur.

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.