How much life insurance do you need?
This is one of those annoying questions that can only be answered with other questions. The simple fact is that it depends on a whole variety of factors such how old you are, your family situation, and what future you’re insuring your loved ones for or against.
The same is true of any enterprise’s disaster recovery and business continuity planning, which is really no different than life insurance for the business. How much do you need and how do you quantifiably measure that need?
This is where the Business Impact Analysis (BIA) comes in. It is a study of the business and what it needs to operate, and how much it would cost if operations were idled. Only then can accurate budgeting be applied in the disaster recovery and business continuity planning cycle to address strategies to mitigate losses due to a business interruption.
The BIA is the all important first step in any organization’s disaster recovery planning cycle. Our BIA analysis has three primary objectives:
- Identify business units, IT processes and their critical functions; identify any existing contingencies, determine maximum tolerable period of disruption
- Determine desired Recovery Time Objectives and Recovery Point Objectives for each critical unit or process and determine requirements
- Provide a detailed findings report delivered, reviewed by senior management
At the end of the engagement the organization will receive a comprehensive report including:
- Executive Summary explaining purpose and methodology with high level overview of findings
- Gap analysis with recommended mitigation strategies or risk acceptance statements
- Comparative analysis charts including Recovery Time Objective, Recovery Point Objective, operational impact factors, required recovery staff by day, daily cost to operations for idled department, and others
- Detailed findings report outlining all units and processes identified, analysis performed and objective requirements
These findings can then be rolled into the business continuity planning and budgeting processes to ensure the most affordable, effective, and realistic plans for the enterprise.
For more information, contact us today.