BUSINESS IMPACT ANALYSIS
DRIVING DECISIONS
A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) drives decisions and activities within an organization. By estimating the potential impact and risks associated with the disruption of business functions, processes, and supporting systems/technologies, the BIA provides crucial insights. These insights help inform decision-making processes across various areas, such as resource allocation, risk mitigation strategies, and the development of contingency plans. The BIA serves as a valuable tool for understanding the potential consequences of disruptions, enabling organizations to prioritize efforts, allocate resources effectively, and make informed decisions to ensure business continuity and resilience.
RISK MANAGEMENT
INCIDENT RESPONSE PLAN
STANDARDS & POLICIES
CLOUD STRATEGIES
PEOPLE & TRAINING
LONG-TERM ARCHITECTURE DECISIONS:
BUSINESS JUSTIFICATION
RISK MANAGEMENT:
Risk and threat discussions in BIA can identify areas of enterprise risk that need to be tracked in a standard risk management process.
INCIDENT RESPONSE PLAN:
BIA is a necessary precursor to effective BCP and DRP planning. The DRP in particular must be highly integrated with a company’s incident response plan (IRP). At some point during an incident or breach, it may be necessary to declare a disaster. These two process areas, therefore, must be reliably linked.
STANDARDS & POLICIES:
BIA drives definition and decisions about standards and policies. Since policy development and approval is an ongoing process, BIA and BCP inputs should be considered as input into regular revisions.
CLOUD STRATEGIES:
BIA takes into account both internal and external systems that support core business processes. While enterprise control is lessened in a cloud situation, a BIA can lead to contract revisions and/or upgrades if a hosted application or system is deemed highly impactful to critical business functions.
PEOPLE & TRAINING:
A BIA, BCP, DRP, and IRP all serve as drivers for people and training. If new approaches to phishing, malware, ransomware, etc. are utilized by bad actors, people in the organization must be able to recognize and act upon them.
LONG-TERM ARCHITECTURE DECISIONS:
A BIA can influence long-term architecture decisions around resilience, data integrity, privacy, and system reliability.
BUSINESS JUSTIFICATION:
Every item described above has a cost and benefit. A BIA can drive decisions on policies, architecture, training, response planning, budgeting, etc. The tradeoffs between cost, risk, and value for all of the above must always be considered and analyzed as part of long-term planning.
RISK MANAGEMENT
INCIDENT RESPONSE PLAN
STANDARDS & POLICIES
CLOUD STRATEGIES
PEOPLE & TRAINING
LONG-TERM ARCHITECTURE DECISIONS:
BUSINESS JUSTIFICATION
RISK MANAGEMENT:
Risk and threat discussions in BIA can identify areas of enterprise risk that need to be tracked in a standard risk management process.
INCIDENT RESPONSE PLAN:
BIA is a necessary precursor to effective BCP and DRP planning. The DRP in particular must be highly integrated with a company’s incident response plan (IRP). At some point during an incident or breach, it may be necessary to declare a disaster. These two process areas, therefore, must be reliably linked.
STANDARDS & POLICIES:
BIA drives definition and decisions about standards and policies. Since policy development and approval is an ongoing process, BIA and BCP inputs should be considered as input into regular revisions.
CLOUD STRATEGIES:
BIA takes into account both internal and external systems that support core business processes. While enterprise control is lessened in a cloud situation, a BIA can lead to contract revisions and/or upgrades if a hosted application or system is deemed highly impactful to critical business functions.
PEOPLE & TRAINING:
A BIA, BCP, DRP, and IRP all serve as drivers for people and training. If new approaches to phishing, malware, ransomware, etc. are utilized by bad actors, people in the organization must be able to recognize and act upon them.
LONG-TERM ARCHITECTURE DECISIONS:
A BIA can influence long-term architecture decisions around resilience, data integrity, privacy, and system reliability.
BUSINESS JUSTIFICATION:
Every item described above has a cost and benefit. A BIA can drive decisions on policies, architecture, training, response planning, budgeting, etc. The tradeoffs between cost, risk, and value for all of the above must always be considered and analyzed as part of long-term planning.
