Disaster recovery: what's happening with your papers?

While businesses are all too aware of – if not very keen on taking any action over - the problems facing them in the event of their IT systems going down, it seems that the low-tech end of disaster recovery is being ignored completely.

More than one half of businesses have no disaster recovery programme for the humble office paperwork and 40 per cent said losing all their paper-based information would have a severe effect on their business, with another 41 per cent said they wouldn't be able to replace the information, according to a survey carried out by Fujitsu.

When it comes to working out a disaster recovery strategy paper is often overlooked, with the loss of non-electronic contracts and legal data being brought into contact with a box of matches or light-fingered individual posing the biggest risk to business.

Fujitsu's David Whitton said in a statement: "What this survey highlights is that when it comes to disaster recovery planning, paper-based documents are rarely considered. What many businesses don't realise is that losing all their paper would severely hamper the business as a whole - and would be likely to cost substantial inconvenience, time and money as they struggle to recover the lost information."

One option for companies is electronically scanning documents or keeping back-up copies offsite, said the report.