Yorkshire risks pouring £4.4 million profit down the drain

Another widespread Ransomware crisis, such as WannaCry, would cost the region millions, as staggering survey results show that Yorkshire is unprepared for a widespread ransomware attack.

The recent attack on the NHS was devastating to all involved, but it is only one of thousands of viruses that can hold and destroy business information at will.

The outbreak brought a significant amount of attention to the threat of cyber-criminals, but businesses still need to be aware of other risks to their data, such as natural events and IT incidents, as recently witnessed at British Airways.

In both of these cases, a comprehensive Business Continuity plan could have had the organisation productive again within minutes. 

Coincidentally, these events happened around the time that virtualDCS decided to repeat its investigation into Yorkshire Disaster Recovery preparedness. Participants were asked to complete a survey and a number of questions based on their existing strategies.

Currently, in Yorkshire, there are 200 medium-sized businesses actively working and contributing to an impressive regional turnover of £27bn. From emails to invoices and images, these businesses need their data to function successfully; however, virtualDCS discovered that around 144 of these businesses are currently at risk due to a lack of Disaster Recovery preparedness.

Out of all the participants surveyed, only 41% of businesses were confident that they had a Disaster Recovery plan in place. What’s even more concerning is that nearly half of those surveyed had already lost or potentially lost important information over the last two years and have chosen to leave themselves unprotected.

Currently, almost three-quarters of businesses within the region are happy to lose over 24 hours’ worth of business data at any time, which, given a widespread disaster, would cost the region at least £4.4 million in profit.

If participants were struck by flooding, a virus or hardware failure, they may be unable to operate – putting both the business and employees at risk.

This frightening statistic doesn’t only apply to SMEs within the region, as 28% of those surveyed had a business turnover of over £10 million, with 44% having 51+ employees.

Despite these concerning statistics, there has been a positive change within the region overall, with the number of businesses that continually protect their data increasing by 8%.

Businesses were also generally more confident in their overall continuity plans than the previous year, with a 2% increase in businesses with an active recovery plan in place.

The results also uncovered that:

- If an IT incident were to occur, 28% of companies don’t know if they’d be able to restore their information.
- Only 29% of businesses continuously protect their data.
- 13% of businesses knew they wouldn’t be able to recover all of their data after an incident. Last year, this figure was 15%.


If you would like an informal, no obligation discussion about finding solutions to your current IT challenges, call us today on 03453 888 327 or email enquiries@virtualDCS.co.uk