New research suggests that employees and businesses do not have adequate skills to deal with disaster recovery, according to BT.

It is claimed that 41 per cent of employees are aware that there is a business continuity plan but do not fully understand it.

A third of respondents did not know their employers had one in place and 22 per cent thought that losing a mobile electronic device with business or sensitive information did not constitute a disaster.

Ray Stanton, global head of BT's business continuity, said: "The worry is that at the same time they have been forgetting about the fundamentals. Many can no longer see the wood for the trees. It's time for businesses and the security industry to go back to basics."

BT identified other security issues in need of improvement, including data encryption and threat management systems to prevent denial of service attacks.

The research and advice was prepared in advance of the Infosecurity 2008 forum taking place this week.

New research from Connect found that, on average, it takes businesses that use backup tapes take 11.6 hours to retrieve and restore files. Connect is now recommending that SMEs switch to www.totalrecall.co.uk