A new study has revealed that IT resilience remains a critical weakness for UK enterprises, despite years of digital transformation initiatives.

Research commissioned by colocation data centre provider Asanti found that 72% of senior IT decision-makers experienced significant disruption or downtime in the past year due to resilience issues, while only 31% expressed extreme confidence in their disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

The survey, titled Why Some Organisations Are Still Not Getting Their IT Resilience Plans Right, conducted by Vanson Bourne among 100 senior IT leaders across public and private sector organisations, highlights a gap between perceived and actual resilience performance. While many organisations believe their systems are robust, the findings suggest preparedness and planning are falling short.

Planning Gaps and Overconfidence Leave IT Systems Exposed

Only 56% of respondents said they had fully defined and regularly tested Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), with just 36% reporting the same for Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) – the key thresholds for acceptable downtime and data loss.

Sixty per cent of organisations struggled to return to normal operations after a major disruption, and 58% admitted to incurring substantial financial losses.

Confidence in risk recovery is also low, with over half of respondents expressing only low or medium confidence in their ability to manage major risks such as cybersecurity breaches (54%), data centre outages (61%), or unauthorised physical access (62%).

The research points to what Asanti calls a “resilience competency gap”, where planning, testing, and investment are not keeping pace with the complexity and frequency of modern IT threats. Despite widespread cloud adoption, 51% of IT leaders still view cloud service outages as one of the top risks to operations – a higher proportion than those concerned about traditional IT system failures (49%).

“Too many organisations assume they’re more resilient than they actually are,” said Stewart Laing, CEO of Asanti.

“This research makes clear that real resilience isn’t about where your systems live – it’s about how well you’ve prepared to keep them running.

“Without clearly defined recovery objectives, rigorous testing and a culture of proactive risk management, even the most advanced infrastructure can fail. Business leaders must move beyond surface-level confidence and embed resilience into every layer of operations.”

Human Error and Blind Spots Undermining Resilience

The study also found that human factors remain a major vulnerability, with 89% of respondents identifying human oversight as a critical weakness in resilience strategies, and 91% agreeing that operational failures caused by human error could compromise backup power capabilities.

While 59% of organisations test their business continuity and disaster recovery plans at least every six months, Asanti’s research suggests that these exercises often lack the depth needed to uncover systemic weaknesses. Just 31% of respondents said they were extremely confident in their current plans.

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The findings also indicate that businesses may not be measuring the full impact of downtime. Although 77% track the duration of outages and 73% assess their financial cost, fewer measure reputational damage (54%) or the impact on digital transformation goals (57%).

“Measurement is the foundation of resilience,” Laing added.

“If you’re only tracking outages and costs, you’re missing the true business impact. Resilience must be strategic, tested and integrated across infrastructure, operations and leadership thinking.”