Use IT outsourcing to avoid damage from system outages - guru

Written by Jenny Smith

As internet usage increases, businesses need to ensure that they have adequate security and back-up resources so that they are not affected by system outages, according to an expert.

Tony Neate, managing director at the UK's national internet security awareness campaign, Get Safe Online, says that, as we link up more and more technologies to the web, such as mobile phones, the risk of losing information increases.

If a firm is hit by a virus and cannot get onto the internet, it can have a massive impact on their business if important data is stored online, so companies should outsource protection and back-up to a specialist provider, he suggests.

Mr Neate explains that attacks from hackers or the system collapsing "upstream" can cause outages, so it is vital that firms have "a number to ring to make sure you get it back up as fast as you possibly can".

According to a recent report by BakBone Software, 20 per cent of UK organisations could not maintain normal operations if data was not accessible for up to one hour.