Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
The entire concept of business continuity is based on the identification of all business functions within an organization, and then assigning a level of importance to each business function. A business impact analysis is the primary tool for gathering this information and assigning criticality, recovery point objectives, and recovery time objectives, and is therefore part of the basic foundation of business continuity.
The BIA can be used to identify extent and timescale of the impact on different levels of an organization. For instance it can examine the effect of disruption on operational, functional and strategic activities of an organization. Not only the current activities but the effect of disruption on major business changes, introducing new product or services for example, can be determined by BIA.
Most standards require that a business impact analysis should be reviewed at defined intervals appropriate for each organization and whenever any of the following occur:
- Significant changes in the internal business process, location or technology
- Significant changes in the external business environment – such as market or regulatory change
Read more about this topic: Business Continuity
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