Survey: Small Businesses Working to Reduce Vulnerabilities in Information Protection, Leadership Development, Planning
CDW Corporation, a provider of technology products and services to business, government and education, announced the 2009 CDW Report on Small Business Resilience, which identifies management and information technology (IT) infrastructure factors that contribute to business survivability and studies how small businesses are responding to the economic recession.
Based upon a survey of 613 small businesses nationally, the report states that just 45 percent of small business owners are optimistic about their prospects for growth throughout the next five years and that they are shifting marketing and operating strategies to address the rocky business climate. In addition to economic threats, the report indicates that small businesses often contend with structural vulnerabilities that affect their resilience even in good times, including over-reliance on their top leadership, a lack of structured business processes and risky under-protection of critical information.
“The recession has severely challenged small businesses, but it has also spurred owners to re-configure their strategies and tactics in ways that will help them once the economy rebounds,” said Maria Sullivan, vice president, CDW Small Business Sales. “The CDW Report on Small Business Resilience finds that businesses could significantly increase their resilience – in good times or bad – by doing more to capture, preserve and share the knowledge and insights that their principals accumulate throughout years of experience.”
The Report found that 99 percent of small business leaders believe that their businesses could recover their data in the event of a major loss – and yet other findings from the same study suggest that many businesses should not be so confident. For example, 73 percent of small businesses that have computing networks report they have neither onsite nor offsite data backup (65 percent of respondents have computing networks) and 29 percent have no backup power for their data center or data storage. Even among businesses that report having business continuity/disaster recovery plans, 33 percent make no provision for restoration of data and computer systems, 32 percent do not include offsite data backup and 16 percent include no regular backup of critical data at all.
See Small Businesses Working to Reduce Vulnerabilities in Information Protection, Leadership Development, Planning, from CDW.
Tags: CDW, resilience, survey
