The dramatic rise in social networking and mobility trends is presenting new challenges and considerations to companies' network security, disaster planning and business continuity programs. The good news: businesses are stepping up their technology investment and efforts to meet these challenges despite the economy; and mobile devices are increasingly part of business continuity plans. These are some of the findings to emerge from AT&T's annual study on business continuity and disaster recovery preparedness for U.S. businesses in the private sector.


For the eighth consecutive year, AT&T surveyed IT executives from companies throughout the United States that have at least $25 million in annual revenue to get their views on disaster planning and business continuity trends. Sixty-eight percent of the companies surveyed this year have locations outside of the U.S.

2009 AT&T Business Continuity Study Key Findings:

- 2009 IT Spending Trends and Investment in New Technologies. Two-thirds (65%) of all executives indicate that their companies will be investing in new technologies for 2009. Investment tends to focus on new equipment and a variety of software, storage and security upgrades.

When looking at IT spending trends for this year, forty percent of executives surveyed indicated that their IT budgets are expected to be lower this year than in the previous two years, while nearly one-fourth (24%) indicated that budgets will be higher. Interestingly, companies with business continuity plans in place are significantly more likely than those without plans to anticipate budget increases (32% compared to 11%).

- Mobility Considerations Emerge. Sixty-seven percent of executives indicate that wireless network capabilities are part of their business continuity plan. Furthermore, nearly half (46%) stated that mobile devices play a major role in their plan's considerations.

- Social Networking Heightens Security Threats. Three out of four executives surveyed are concerned about the increased use of social networking capabilities' potential impact on network security. Forty-four percent allow employees access to such social networking sites. However, hacking still continues to be listed as the biggest security risk to companies (30% compared with 3% for social networking).

Business Continuity Planning Trends

One-third of companies surveyed have used their business continuity plan that is in place. Nationally, companies are most likely to invoke their business continuity plan due to extreme weather (25%) or power outages at facilities (19%). When looking at the five markets surveyed, companies in Houston and Miami/Orlando/Tampa are significantly more likely to have invoked their business continuity plan (52% and 51% respectively, compared with 36% nationally). These results are not surprising considering these regions have been hit the hardest with hurricanes.

Nearly seventy-four percent of businesses surveyed set target recovery times for their key business processes (compared with sixty-seven percent in 2008), an indication that businesses understand not only is it important to have a plan in place, but that plan needs to identify goals and expectations for recovery should it be invoked. In the event of a natural or man-made disaster, these companies have special arrangements for communicating with key executives spanning voice, email and text-messaging.

In addition, the study found that companies have put increased attention to not only their own business continuity plans but those of their key partners and suppliers. One-third of the respondents require suppliers and other vendors to have a business continuity plan in place in order to do business with their company.