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EdExec

March 02, 2009

Full text of original article at EdExec web site

UK schools do not consider data backup or recovery policies

Over a third of schools do not have an effective data backup and recovery policy in place according to research from Acronis.

Over one-third of UK schools (37 per cent) do not have a full data backup and recovery policy in place, according to research carried out by. In the last twelve months, nearly one in ten (7 per cent) UK schools have suffered an IT failure from which they were unable to recover their data.

The survey also reveals that over half (57 per cent) of respondents think that the credit crunch may impact significantly on the budget for their school's backup and recovery solutions during 2009. This could mean many schools will risk going without data backup and recovery solutions - potentially impacting on exam pass rates and the school's reputation. Alternatively, they will need to find budget from elsewhere to ensure all their digital assets remain protected, should the worst happen.

Kevin Moreau, general manager of Acronis UK & Ireland, said: "Education organisations are increasing their reliance on IT resources - and therefore increasing the volume of their digital data. This means that the chance of a data loss, along with the size, scale and seriousness of a disruption, is rocketing and just like any other organisation, they are vulnerable in the event that their data is wiped by a virus or accidently erased."

Moreau concludes: "In the current economic climate, education establishments should be seeking software that doubles up to provide efficient data backup and recovery as well as protection from PC viruses. With 51 per cent of schools suffering from severe system downtime each year, tools such as disk imaging software provide an extremely cost-effective solution that ensure a secure backup, but also offer the ability to roll back in time to the system's last ‘good state', if they are hit by a virus outbreak."

This survey was taken from a sample of 127 IT decision makers in the education sector. The interviews were conducted face-to-face in January 2009