A series of dramatic, high profile and UK-focused environmental incidents over the past year has finally put disaster recovery (DR) high on the Board’s agenda - according to over 25 large businesses taking part in last week’s Effective Disaster Recovery workshop.A straw poll at the workshop found that all of the corporates present had DR plans in place and were testing them and that some have even had to implement them in response to a specific threat - many companies highlighted the influence of the Board in the drive towards DR.

These conclusions stand in sharp contrast to those of an event held 18 months ago which found low levels of awareness of DR at Board level and few companies actively testing any DR plans that were in place. The group concluded that a major motivating factor for the change of priority was that many boardrooms were now more aware of the relatively small-scale incidents - such as floods, power outages and earthquakes - happening locally and close to the company’s HQ.

Whilst large scale terrorist attacks and potential disease pandemics strike fear into the heart of many CEOs, they don’t appear to encourage much action. Many consider such threats to be too ‘distant’ or too wide ranging to spur immediate action.