NEWS
Majority of Britons know little about data centres, despite depending on them to power everyday life
Almost nine in ten people in the UK say they know little or nothing about data centres – even though these facilities underpin services ranging from online banking and the NHS to streaming, social media and Artificial Intelligence.
New national research by SEC Newgate, a corporate affairs and research consultancy, shows this knowledge gap is widespread, with 89 % of adults unfamiliar with data centres and 14 % saying they have never heard of them at all, raising questions about how this knowledge gap may risk undermining the growth of the UK’ s digital economy.
Understanding of what data centres are used for drops sharply beyond cloud storage and AI, with only around half of respondents recognising that essential, everyday services – including online banking, email, online shopping and healthcare systems – depend on data centres.
The report, Does Not Compute: What the UK public really thinks about data centres, is based on a nationally representative survey of more than 1,500 members of the public, alongside a separate survey of almost 500 councillors who sit on local authority planning committees – many of whom will be responsible for deciding future data centre developments.
Despite limited understanding, the research shows public attitudes towards data centres are still being formed and can shift quickly when people are given basic, neutral information. When respondents were provided with factual information explaining what data centres do, how they operate and why they are needed, attitudes shifted markedly.
A majority of UAE organisations have lost more than US $ 500,000 due to poor business continuity management
As organisations across the Middle East navigate an increasingly volatile operating environment, new research from Optro( formerly AuditBoard) reveals a concerning disconnect between how resilient UAE organisations believe they are and how they actually perform during disruption.
Meanwhile, only 38 % have established recovery time objectives( RTOs) and recovery point objectives( RPOs) for all critical business processes, while just 22 % have fully mapped critical business processes to the technology systems, third parties and supply chain dependencies required to support them.
According to the study, just 19 % of UAE organisations have a formal disaster recovery plan in place, the lowest figure recorded globally and significantly below the global average of 31 %.
This is starkly contrasted by confidence levels which remain remarkably high. Nearly three-quarters( 73 %) of respondents expressed confidence in their organisation’ s ability to meet established recovery objectives during a major disruption, while 79 % said they were confident in their ability to demonstrate operational resilience compliance to regulators.
In reality, however, for organisations that experienced a significant disruption during the past 12 months, 62 % failed to recover within their established RTOs with more than a third( 34 %) exceeding their recovery targets by more than twice the planned timeframe. Business continuity activation also proved challenging, with 42 % unable to activate their business continuity management( BCM) plans within the first 24 hours of a major incident and only 15 % able to do so within the first four hours.
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