There is a significant disconnect between C-level executives and IT professionals in the realm of disaster recovery, according to a recent survey conducted by Evolve IP.

Within the survey, more than 500 executives and IT professionals uncovered factors that contribute to an organisations disaster recovery (DR) confidence overall.

DR compliance was a clear driver of confidence in the ability to recover IT and related assets in the event of an incident - with most respondents feel feel very prepared.

Use of next generation technology to enable recovery increases overall confidence in IT professionals, with Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) increasing confidence.

Moving IT infrastructure offsite by deploying a managed service provider environment was also a hot topic that gave a confidence boost.

Scott Kinka, chief technology officer and founding partner of Evolve IP, says in the years Evolve IP has conducted the survey, they're assured by the fact that companies are becoming increasingly aware of the need to protect critical business assets.

"More companies are avoiding risky backup policies considered 'good enough' in years past, using backup tape or replicating data to a secondary mirror site less than 50 miles from their main data center, for instance,” he says.

“Instead, we've seen notable growth in the number of companies developing a disaster recovery plan and educating themselves to the benefits of new DR approaches like DRaaS."

The survey also found that only 38% and 35% of respondents in education and manufacturing feel prepared to recover from an incident.

And, approximately one-third (33%) of companies reported to have suffered from at least one incident or outage that required disaster recovery.

Hardware failure and server room issues remain the leading cause of an outage, reported by 48% of respondents.