Business continuity planning has become a chief priority for the majority of London-based IT executives.

This is the good news, according to telecoms provider AT&T, whose recent survey of London-based IT executives found that 83% of businesses have a business continuity plan in place. What’s more, 72% of these companies have updated these plans within the last 12 months.

The bad news, however, is that many London businesses do not have the necessary level of visibility on London’s critical infrastructures to ensure that these plans will prove effective in the event of a disaster. “There have been huge improvements in business continuity in recent years,” observes Martin Lynch, CEO of London-based business continuity provider Infinity. “But the issue of business continuity is very complicated because businesses have undergone so much technical change.” 

According to Lynch, the complexity of London’s current telecoms infrastructures requires businesses to address business continuity planning at an extremely fine level. In many instances, telecoms infrastructures are mutually reliant and often share hardware resources, creating an unforeseen “single weak link” that could potentially disable business operations if exploited. Many businesses are not aware of this problem, says Lynch. “Unless you look at the plans in a very fine level of detail you would not see it. Businesses can’t make those judgements.”

London’s electronic infrastructures are particularly vulnerable, a further source has revealed. “It would be possible to shut down the whole of the South-East electricity grid for three years if you knew how,” the source claims. 

According to the intelligence community, London is now the world’s epicenter for international terrorism and is regarded as a major target of politically motivated physical attacks. For nearly one third of those IT executives surveyed by AT&T, events in recent years, including natural disasters and terrorist threats, have prompted them to review their plans. 

Measures implemented by London-based businesses include backup facilities, restore procedures, and the education of employees, according to AT&T. The majority of organisations (76%) have also established procedures for off-site storage and recovery of back-up data, as well as having established redundant servers and back-up sites.

But in order for London-based businesses to ensure adequate long-term business continuity they will have to continue to review their business continuity plans at a detailed level on an ongoing basis, says Lynch.

Information Age analysis: Terrorism: IT's response