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Opinion: Don't forget security when you wrap up for Christmas
Time for a government campaign?

By Brian White

Published: Thursday 15 December 2005

With so many organisations - especially small ones - unprepared for disasters, Brian White suggests the government should step in to help.

At this time of year many manufacturing businesses will be thinking about their annual audit and stock take in the quiet period after Christmas.

Retailers will be thinking about the pressure to deliver in the New Year sales but how many companies will be thinking about how secure their businesses really are?

In the physical world we lock our premises, put in burglar alarms and take out insurance policies. Online we will normally have some from of rudimentary protection such as a firewall or antivirus software.

But beyond that - and many companies and individuals fall short of even this basic level - how well covered are we?

It is estimated that 70 per cent of small businesses will not survive after they suffer a catastrophic computer failure - whether that is accidental or a deliberate attack.

Mostly this is because they haven't put in place the back-up plans for dealing with this.

Disaster recovery has been around in the IT world for decades but outside of the very large companies it is still a case of fingers crossed.

How many of us take daily back-ups? How many of us who do back up still retain that back-up on the same site? How quickly could my system be up and running if I lost everything? I suspect my own business would struggle - and I am aware of the issue.

The government rightly wants this country to be the best place to do e-business and that means we need to have a safe, secure and recoverable environment.

For many people who do not have the right experience, the costs and complexities of planning for disaster recovery are off-putting. They prefer to think that, like the 10 people each day who die in a road accident, that it will never happen to them.

The government runs many safety awareness campaigns so perhaps it is time for them - in conjunction with the industry - to run one on measures to protect your business online. They have done so in terms of children safely using the internet but what about ensuring that our wealth-creating sector has the tools and environment in which to prosper?

The computer suppliers also have a vested interest here to ensure it is not simply seen as an opportunity to sell niche products or as a way for consultants to charge the earth to scare companies. Just as physical security is a mixture of community and individual actions so online recovery should be as well. How about local authorities providing a safe place with a simple procedure to store company back-ups offsite?

How about Business Link and others getting a simple standard recovery package made available to small businesses? Or is there an opportunity for an entrepreneurial individual to step in to fill the gap?

If you look at the Home Office or DTI web pages you struggle to find any reference to this aspect in all the words about the terrorist threat or business support. Accidents and incidents will happen. What will make the difference is how we respond to them.

Brian White is a business adviser and former MP for Milton Keynes North East. When an MP, he was treasurer of the Parliamentary ICT Committee and an officer of the All Party Internet Group.