Poll: Execs Misjudge Disaster Threat

Are technology executives from Venus and business executives from Mars? Everyone knows that men and women don't always see eye-to-eye, but it turns out that U.S. corporate executives might also need a crash-course in basic interpersonal communication.

According to a poll by market research firm RoperASW, commissioned by EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), business and IT executives in the U.S. have dramatically different perceptions of their company's disaster preparedness (see Poll: Firms Unprepared for Disaster).

The phone survey of 274 executives at billion-dollar-plus U.S. corporations showed that only 14 percent of business leaders thought their business data would be very vulnerable in the case of a disaster. In contrast, 52 percent of all technology executives surveyed said their company's business data is at risk in the event of a catastrophe.

U.S. execs were also at odds when it came to how long they think it will take to get their data back up and running in the case of a disaster. While only 9 percent of business executives said that it would take more than three days for their company's data to be retrieved after a major outage, 23 percent of all the technology execs said that it could take at least three days to get their data up and running again.

"Business executives seem to have a false sense of security," says Stacy Bereck, senior VP at RoperASW. "This either means they're not getting the right information; they're getting the right information but not understanding it; or understanding it and ignoring it." [Ed. note: Or perhaps the information came from British intelligence agencies...]