Increasing threats and missing skills

Results are in from the 2nd annual SteelEye Technology Business Continuity Index, a survey examining adoption levels, best practices and attitudes regarding business continuity among IT professionals and C-level executives. Top-level findings show that even as business continuity threats continue to rise, universities and graduate-level information technology programs are not arming their students with the skills they need to prevent or recover from IT disasters.

While 87% of respondents indicated they think the average IT organization faces the same or more threats to business continuity than it did a year before, a strong majority (61%) said that today’s college and graduate IT programs do not place enough emphasis on skills to implement business continuity.

Similarly, 60% of all organizations said that the average IT organization is no more prepared for these threats to business continuity than it was a year previously. And among respondents from organizations with an admitted business need for disaster recovery or business continuity protection, the top reason given for avoiding investment was the lack of skills to implement it.

To help address the gap in skill set, 79% of respondents said they are focusing on adding technology more than IT personnel resource in their efforts to assure business continuity. Improvement may be in sight, however, if the academic community follows the lead of C-level executives. 81% of surveyed IT managers felt their CEOs considered business continuity a top priority and two-thirds (66%) reported that they felt their CEOs understood what IT teams needed in order to assure business continuity.