Over three quarters of small and medium sized financial services firms in Europe only back up their data once a day or less, according to research commissioned by vendor Acronis.
According to the survey of 149 firms with between 250 and 500 staff in France, Germany and the UK, only 18% back up every hour. The majority - 74% - run back ups on servers every day but seven per cent only carry them out once a week and one per cent only monthly.
When it comes to PCs and laptops, 16% don't back up at all and 22% only do it manually. With up to 60% of organisations' data held on workstations, not servers, this leaves firms at serious risk, says Acronis.
The value of backing up regularly is highlighted by the length of time respondents say it would take to recover data. Only 11% say they could recover data within an hour, 31% in a morning and 42% within a day. For 15% it would take a week and one per cent say they would not be able to recover it at all.
The biggest fear related to data disappearing is lost revenue and customers, cited by 37% of respondents. Over a quarter worry they would lose their job, 22% that it would hit their firm's reputation and 17% that it would affect regulatory compliance.
David Blackman, GM, Northern Europe, Acronis, says: "With little room for downtime in today's business environment, it's surprising that many financial companies still don't carry out regular backups."