New research carried out on behalf of CA shows that while businesses are becoming better at evaluating risks to their business and planning for them, many still do not have an integrated business risk management strategy that includes IT.

As a result, businesses are often held back from deploying the technologies essential for creating competitive advantage, driving business growth and assuring compliance. 89% of those surveyed said concerns about business risk had deterred them from implementing new technologies like supply chain management, advanced communications and the adoption of home working.

One of the main reasons for this lack of deployment is a continuing concern about IT security and how this integrates with the storage and retrieval of company information which could be addressed by an effective risk management strategy.Organisations are becoming more dependent on IT and therefore managing the risks associated with IT systems is critical to the business. Most businesses do have security policies that cover the use of company systems and information, and have recovery plans in place to retrieve this data, but these policies are not always aligned with business risk planning and do not integrate storage and security. This is despite growing appreciation amongst businesses that these disciplines benefit from greater centralisation, with 43% seeing major benefit here and 31% identifying this coordination as 'useful'.

The research, which surveyed 100 senior managers across the UK, also found that:
* Loss of critical business information and operational downtime as a result of system failure were in the top 3 list of concerns , around 90% of businesses consider these explicitly in planning, over 60% say they are a major concern
* Illicit use of confidential information is still a major risk consideration, with 94% considering it during planning and 65% of respondents highlighting it as a major concern
* Legal and regulatory compliance and the need for traceability need to be addressed with IT, over 80% of businesses said this was a consideration when planning and this is clearly linked to effective storage and data retrieval
* Around 60% said the proliferation of data across locations makes managing data back-up and/or recovery a challenge. The average level of confidence in the safety of critical data distributed in this way is 71% or the rough equivalent of a one in three chance of locally held and mobile data being at risk
* 77% of businesses also cited security concerns about the increased use of portable storage devices