Not all service failures will constitute a disaster; many will simply be incidents that are resolved in due course, like a technology service failure or a building infrastructure issue. The BC & DR Coordinator is responsible to declare a disaster and to invoke the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan, as well as make any required decisions.
In some situations, this may require considering the risks involved in waiting for a resolution vs invoking recovery operations. For example, a technology infrastructure failure may result in client data being unavailable.
- One outcome is recovery of the infrastructure with no data loss, in the normal course of IT operations, but that may take considerable time.
- Another is invoking the BC & DR plan and restoring from backup or reverting to replicated data, which may provide access to those data faster, but the data may be a day old.
Additionally, there is risk involved with invoking BC & DR. These procedures are not in the normal course of operations, may not have been tested recently, may not function as expected or in the time expected, and may not result in the desired outcome.
While it is the responsibility of the BC & DR coordinator to declare a disaster and make any necessary decisions, this will typically be done in consultation with firm management. The BC & DR coordinator must also be able to suitably assess the risks of any required decisions and articulate those risks to management.