Preparing to keep the vital processes of your organization going through any of a wide range of incidents is challenging stuff. While IT is important, it clearly is not the whole picture. After all, if you are in manufacturing, what use is it to have your remote backup computer center in full operation five minutes after the fire started, if your national warehouse is burned to the ground? So, all departments are in this BC thing together. Nevertheless, expectations are particularly high for IT continuity. Why is that?

We offer the following three examples of why most organizations expect their BC capability to be especially high in IT:

Reason 1: Computers and IT people are supposed to be "right"
If you run a car dealership and a malicious arsonist destroys all the vehicles on your lot, you will probably get a lot of sympathy, not only from your mother, but from most people. They will tell you how unlucky you have been.

But if you run the IT department of the same car dealership and a malicious hacker destroys all your data, don't expect sympathy from anyone. Even your mother will smack you around a bit. The word "unlucky" will be replaced with "incompetent".

It's no use complaining about "unfair". The upside is that most people think we in IT are smarter than average and pay us more; the downside is they expect us to be perfect.

Reason 2: IT has concentrated assets
When was the last time you heard of a car-stealing ring that lifted 400,000,000 cars? On the other hand, you probably read recently about 400,000,000 credit cards being stolen in one raid. The very nature of IT that allows us to be so productive in supporting the needs of the organization, can make malicious or accidental incidents equally productive in abusing our assets.

Reason 3: IT has the crown jewels of recovery
Information is the life blood of normal operation. Equally it is the lifeblood of recovering and getting back to normal operation. If only half of your warehouse burns down, how can you make use of the inventory in the other half if you don't know what orders are outstanding? So, whatever level of success other departments have in other parts of their BC execution, they are going to need IT to be up and running to provide the vital fuel (information) for full recovery.

Conclusion
Whether it is logical or emotional, fair or unjust, IT must operate at the highest level of BC. But fear not, this is true in all organizations, so help is on the way.

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