Assessing IT Disaster Recovery Plans

All the information technology (IT) literature emphasizes the fact that a properly managed organization should have a well-developed IT disaster recovery plan (DRP) to enable it to continue its operations in the event of a disruption and to be able to survive a disastrous interruption to its information systems. To determine the current status of IT disaster recovery plans in the UAE, this research attempts to answer the following research questions: 1) what is the overall level of disaster preparedness of businesses in the United Arab Emirates? 2) To what extent does your business have a formal and documented disaster recovery plan in place? 3) What is the level of employees' preparedness and awareness of the existence of the DRB and their role in case of a disaster? 4) The most significant physical and logical risks that pose the most threats to drive the development of the DRB? 5) The extent of the controls in place to mitigate, avoid or transfer risk? and 6) what is the frequency of testing and exercising the DRP? To answer these questions, we surveyed the public companies listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange (ADX).