Reference no: EM132850016

Business Impact Analysis

• The business impact analysis (BIA) is an investigation and assessment of the impact that various events or incidents can have on the organization. A crucial component of the initial planning stages, it also provides a detailed identification and prioritization of critical business functions, which would require protection and continuity in an adverse event.
• The BIA, therefore, adds insight into what the organization must do to respond to adverse events, minimize the damage from such events, recover from the effects, and return to normal operations. One of the fundamental differences between a BIA and the risk management processes discussed in Chapter 1 is that the risk management processes identify the threats, vulnerabilities, and attacks to determine what controls can protect the information. The BIA assumes that these controls have been bypassed, have failed, or were otherwise ineffective in stopping the attack, and that the attack has been successful. In other words, it takes up where the risk assessment process leaves off.
• The BIA begins with the prioritized list of threats and vulnerabilities that were identified in the risk management process, then enhances the list by adding some critical information. The question asked at this point is,"If an attack succeeds, what do you do next?"Obviously, the organization's security team does everything in its power to stop these attacks, but as you have seen, some adverse events, such as natural disasters, deviations from service providers, acts of human failure or error, and deliberate acts of sabotage and vandalism, may be unstoppable.

When undertaking the BIA, Zawada and Evans have noted the following five"Keys to BIA success"that an organization should consider:

Discussion 1. Set the scope for the project carefully. Be sure to consider the functional and administrative units to include, the categories of risks to be addressed, and the range of impacts to be considered.

Discussion 2. Initiate a data-gathering process that will find the information senior managers need to make informed decisions.

Discussion 3. Seek out objective rather than subjective data. Subjective data can be useful when used by experienced analysts, but facts are important.

Discussion 4. Determine the needs of higher management prior to the data collection. The final reported risk assessment and BIA must address those needs to be of value.

Discussion 5. Gain validation of the results derived from the risk assessment and BIA from the owners of the business processes being examined, or else the final product may not have their support.