The relationship between BIA, DR, and business continuity management is how each document informs the other to distribute resources best to focus recovery efforts on the functions and assets most critical to the business. Disaster recovery provides an actionable plan to restore operations as quickly as possible, whereas business continuity is the strategic vision that guides disaster recovery. Lastly, as stated by Vacca, the business impact analysis calculates and accounts for “processes, loss, and cost related to catastrophic events,” which drives the formal execution of business continuity and disaster recovery. Thereby, the BIA identifies what we are recovering, the DR plan details how we are recovering and business continuity explains why are recovering a particular asset/function.
Vacca, J., 2017. Computer and Information Security Handbook. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Morgan Kaufmann.
The Business impact analysis is part of the business continuity management and identifies critical systems and services. The disaster recovery plan ensures that procedures are adhered to, and processes to restore critical systems in the event of the disaster are underway. The disaster recovery plan is a part of the bigger BCP. The business impact analysis captures the specific business process of each department and identifies the personnel necessary to support each other in the process. Business continuity focuses on keeping business operational during a disaster, while disaster recovery focuses on restoring data access and IT infrastructure after a disaster. The disaster recovery plan typically refers to the plans in place to restore essential information technology systems and applications that enable critical business processes. Business continuity plans establish how each business process is performed while IT systems are down. Helps to identify the people and vendors needed to support each other in the process and determine what equipment is needed to perform various job functions.
The relationship between BIA, DR and BCM: To me, these go hand in hand on helping an organization handle an issue like natural disaster, data breach or any other event. The BIA can help predict the consequences of a disruption/ outage; BIA will gather the info needed for a recovery strategy. The business continuity management will deal with keeping the business going during such event and the disaster recovery process then follows guidelines and protocols to get the business back up and running once the event has completed.
Well, said. These three elements go hand in hand. While the BIA creates visibility on consequences of disruptions, Business Continuity Management is the overall process for ensuring business continuity through implementing the Disaster Recovery plan. Accurate.
A disaster recovery plan is a company’s document of instructions on how employees and the company should act in the case of an unplanned disaster. A business impact analysis determines what the consequences are of a disruption in a company’s normal work flow. Business continuity management involves identifying risks to the company and possible threats the company may be exposed to. The relationship between the three concepts are that they all involve identifying a risk that the company faces, the potential losses the company may suffer if they come in contact with this risk, and formulating a plan on how to mitigate the impact of these risks or avoid them entirely.
Business impact analysis is performed to identify the impact that could cause to the organization from the distribution. It could be the financial loss and/or the reputation. The disaster recovery plan is created to help business overcome the any unexpected situation. The impacts identified during the business impact analysis would be help while creating the disaster recovery plan. As it could help identify the critical service of the business which then later could be described to have it up and running before other non-critical services within the disaster recovery plan. Business continuity is a framework to identify the risk within the business. It also provides the ability for the effectively identify and execute the disaster recovery plan and business impact analysis.
Hi Vraj! Great points, I agree with you. Business continuity operations all tie together hand-in-hand–proving that an organization needs to invest in a holistic business continuity program in order to be sufficiently prepared for a disaster.
I really think of the relationship between a business impact analysis (BIA), a disaster recovery plan (DRP) and business continuity management as cyclical. A BIA will determine organizational needs (ie services, support and operations) that are critical to basic continuation of a company’s services. Points defined in a BIA will be addressed and considered when creating/revising a DRP; a successful DRP needs to consider the necessary objectives to business continuity, which is found through BIA’s and risk assessments. Lastly, tasks such as conducting a business continuity/disaster recovery test during proper business continuity management consider points addressed in both BIA’s and DRP’s; but, data extrapolated from business continuity management activities will also be used to better the BIA process and improve a DRP. When it comes down to it, business continuity as a whole is a science; always improving through testing, observing, and analyzing.
I concur with your position that “Business Continuity as a whole is a science, always improving through testing, observing and analyzing” for the under-listed reasons.
1. Observation, In the sense that the BIA is based on observing risks applicable to identified assets to arrive at the impact or consequence.
2. Testing, based on the fact that risk assessment is meant to ascertain whether controls on the ground can identify and mitigate itemized risk in the process by testing their effectiveness
3.. Lastly, Analysis. The BIA is derived from analyzing the consequences of an incident based on its probability of occurring. This is the platform upon which business continuity and disaster recovery are built and implemented, rightly described as an evolving science.
The relationship between business impact analysis, a disaster recovery plan and business continuity management is :
• Business Impact Analysis helps organizations define and prioritize areas that the disaster recovery plan should address
• The disaster recovery plan is implemented by the organization, helping their business continuity management
• Business continuity remains intact in the case of a business disruption (natural disaster, loss of life, etc.)
Hey Andrew,
That’s a good post. Business impact analysis does helps business prioritize the area the disaster recovery plan should address. It also evaluated all the other areas as well so the business would have idea of what process and systems they would be running. Business Impact Analysis function is to evaluate all the areas of the areas of the business to find out how the business would be affected due to any type of disruption.
The Business Impact Analysis (BIA) examines every division of the company and details its exposure to potential disasters, required business functions to navigate such disasters, and how long it can survive during a disaster with access to critical infrastructure only. This analysis informs the Disaster Recovery Plan which is how the organization will respond to the disaster and provides a playbook for the organization that outlines roles, responsibilities, and critical infrastructure that needs to be available. Business continuity management is the process of continually reviewing the organization’s DRP and BIA and identifying changes that should be made in response to new information and/or test outcomes.
I think it’s very important that you’ve pointed out that the business continuity management is continually reviewing the DRP and BIA. These both are plans that need to be as up to date in case of an unforeseen event. If they haven’t been properly tested or updated with new information like you’ve mentioned then they are essentially useless for an organization.
The relationship between these 3 are pretty much the same because they are all playing a significant role in helping an organization recovers from an unplanned incident. To me, all employees not just the IT people must be involved in participating and creating a well detailed plan to keep the business operating in case a natural disaster happens. For example, business continuity focuses on keeping business operational during a disaster, while disaster recovery focuses on restoring data access and responding immediately to a natural disaster such as power outages or any other disruptive events.
Overall, any organization must come up with a good strategy analyzing all critical business processes and be prepared to restore data access in order to keep the business going in case an unplanned incident happens.
I agree that all three play a role in helping an organization recover from an unplanned incident. All three incidents involve identifying a risk that the company faces, the potential losses the company may suffer if they come in contact with this risk, and formulating a plan on how to mitigate the impact of these risks or avoid them entirely. It is important for an organization to come up with the right strategy to keep the business resuming in the case that an unplanned incident occurs.
A BIA identifies the impact of a sudden loss of business functions, usually cost to the business. A BIA also identifies the most critical business functions, which allows you to create a disaster recovery plan that prioritizes the recovery of these essential functions. For example, business continuity focuses on keeping business operational during a disaster, while disaster recovery focuses on restoring data access and IT infrastructure after a disaster.
A disaster recovery plan is always based on and created on the findings of the Business Impact Analysis.
Business continuity management (BCM) is a guide for identifying an organization’s risk of exposure to internal and external threats. BCM includes disaster recovery, business recovery, crisis management, incident management, emergency management, and contingency planning. The Business Impact Analysis is a source for creating data for the business continuity plan, a sub-component of the overall Business Continuity Management.
Business Impact Analysis (BIA) predicts the consequences of interruption of a business function and process and gathers information needed to develop recovery strategies. Disaster Recovery (DR) plan is a formal document created by an organization that covers thorough instructions on how to respond to unexpected incidents such as natural disasters, power outages, cyber attacks, etc. Business Continuity Management (BCM) is the advanced planning and preparation of an organization to continuing business functions or quickly resuming after a disaster has occurred. The relationship between all three functions is that they are step-by-step plans that consists of the protections to minimize the effects of a disaster so the organization can continue to operate or quickly resume mission-critical functions.
The relationship between each share similar processes but facilitate different functions during tragic catastrophes that jeopardize organizations. The Business Impact Analysis identifies key processes and assets that help field Disaster Recovery Processes to bring the organization back into operation. The BIA subsequently identifies which systems will be impacted due to events, and which processes can remain normal during recovery stages. This in return allows the organization to develop continuity management processes such as internal networks segregated from external networks that are afflicted to keep some processes moving forward or prioritize other processes in the event of disaster while disaster recovery teams are working.
The Disaster Recovery Plan would specify the procedures to bring the organization back into normal operations; and continuity management would identify what operations can still function while in recovery. The Business Impact Analysis helps make both of these processes relational as what resources are available and which are in recovery and the prioritization of both resources would be specified. This in return allows the organization to efficiently make use of all resources while recovering from disaster and try to avoid the business decision to close business.
I like your comment about specifying what applications should still function and just as importantly which applications would NOT be a focus of recovery efforts during the recovery phase. It can be just as important to know what NOT to focus on vs what to focus on in that often chaotic recovery phase.
The relationship between a disaster recovery plan and a business impact analysis is that the business impact analysis is conducted first before the disaster recover plan is fully developed. The information gathered during the business impact analysis informs and shapes the disaster recovery plan. These relate to business continuity management in that they supplement the continuity process of an organization. The DRP and BIA are part of the business continuity process. Together they both help identify the steps in which certain areas of the business will recover and continue to function in the event of a major unforeseen disruption.
Business impact analysis, disaster recovery plans, and business continuity management are related to each other in many ways. BIA aids in identifying which steps in a disaster recovery plan are most important, which steps should be acted upon first, and which assets are most important to protect. Both BIA and a DRP are critical to business continuity management because BCM only really comes into place when a disaster occurs and business continuity is halted, and this is also the time where a DRP (written and focused around findings in a BIA) would be acted upon to continue business operations as quickly as possible and minimize loss.
Great points. I see it the same way, all 3 are closely related to each other. Both BIA and DRP essentially help to make up BCM, as you said they come into play when a disaster occurs and the business can not functionally operate. These plans will help keep the business running while the disaster is occurring and help deal with the aftermath.
The business impact analysis is a tool that’s used to come up with recovery objectives and priorities.
The disaster recovery plan is used to achieve the goal of rectifying the disaster and its ramifications right after the disaster strikes; the disaster recovery plan is usually very Information Technology (IT) focused.
Business continuity management is a holistic management process that should cover both disaster recovery and business continuity planning. However, business continuity management provides a framework for integrating resilience with the capability for effective responses in a manner that protects the interests of an organization’s key stakeholders. The main goal of business continuity management is to allow the organization to continue to perform business operations under various conditions.
Hi Joshua, thanks for explaining. I agree with your point. The main goal of BCM is to make sure the organization continues to run no matter what the situation or problems may be.
What is the relationship between business impact analysis, a disaster recovery plan and business continuity management?
A business impact analysis, disaster recovery plan, and business continuity management are closely related as they are all part of business continuity and essentially risk management at large. After creating proper risk assessments, the three of these operations can function cohesively to support and manage business continuity in the event of some disaster. With the risks identified throughout each sector for each individual critical business function, a business impact analysis will help outline the major dependencies that are responsible for allowing these critical business functions to continue operating. Upon making these dependencies resilient, the disaster recovery plan can be constructed to manage business continuity as it details the (hopefully) tested procedures to bring these redundancies online and fully operational, ensuring business continuity with minimal impact to the organization’s revenue from downtime, reputation, and ensuring legal compliance.
A business impact analysis sets the stage for disaster recovery planning. Those systems with severe impacts should be carefully considered, prioritized, and outlined within the DRP. For example, if multiple systems go down, the DRP should outline which systems need immediate attention and need to be switched back on ASAP, and which systems are not as crucial.
The DRP and BIA would be continually revised by business continuity management, so the organization has the most updated version of this plan and analysis in case of an emergency. Management’s decision making process would be impacted by the BIA (as they prioritize which systems to get back online ASAP), and the DRP (as they execute on the plan in an event of an emergency).
I think that describing BIA as setting the stage for DRP is a great way to explain their relationship. I also agree with the point that BCM involves continually updating both of them, as the end goal of BCM is making sure a business can get through and recover from disaster.
Truly. “A business impact analysis sets the stage for disaster recovery planning.” A disaster recovery plan is built on the finding of a BIA wherein the consequences of disruptions to mission-critical processes are clearly articulated. As a result of these stated consequences, visibility is created to create a plan to remediate or mitigate (Disaster Recovery plan).
Both, however, fall under the oversight and umbrella of Business continuity management, which encompasses all programs, processes, and activities geared towards asset protection and business continuity.
Business continuity management encompasses a disaster recovery plan in its process. With a business continuity management it helps. organize the entire scope of how the business longevity plan, this includes planning for prevention, a disaster recovery plan and a rebuild phase for when a disaster recovery plan occurs. A disaster recovery plan encompasses a business impact analysis as it is used in the recovery plan to know what system core functions are most crucial for business operations to help prioritize and asses system core functions in a reasonable time frame. They are all intertwined within each other.
We explained that a disaster recovery plan is a strategy that allows an organization to keep running during an unforeseen event. For a disaster recovery plan to be successful you need to identify the key areas of the business, the key areas being the most critical aspects that cause a disruption like a hack or natural disaster. For me the relationship between a DRP and BIA is the same, you perform a BIA as part of the DRP. Similarly, business continuity management deals with an organization’s ability to provide goods/services after a disaster. Business continuity planning usually beings with business impact assessments, and so all three have a close relation to one another. I will say they differ with their end goals, business continuity will focus on keeping things running during the event where disaster recovery will focus on responding to the aftermath.
I completely agree that they all have their different end goals. I suppose that’s why they are separate processes. I like to look at the BIA as more of a process that gives substance rather than instructions on how to keep an organization running/recover. Both plans have to work in parallel with each other for the business to be efficient and mitigate disaster.
The business impact analysis (BIA) helps organizations determine the critical business processes based on their impact during a disruption. The disaster recovery plan (DRP) utilizes data from the BIA to develop a plan in order to optimize the recovery process by identifying the necessary people as well as the necessary steps to actually perform the recovery. Finally, business continuity planning (BCP) helps organizations reassess their established BIA and DRP plans to ensure the organization is meeting it’s strategic objectives. While each of the three are considered separate components in the IT environment it’s critical to holistically review and test each area to ensure the business can adequately recover and remain operating in the event of a disaster.
What is the relationship between business impact analysis, a disaster recovery plan and business continuity management?
I believe the relationship between business impact analysis, disaster recovery plan and business continuity management is that they all play a critical role in making sure a business survives a disaster in the best way possible.
The DRP is the planning stage for a disaster, an overall what to do list. The BIA is identifying which systems are critical and knowing the order in which they need to come back online. The BCM is the getting back to normal stage/ rebuilding stage. All 3 of these processes play a major role in the recovery of a business.
Both business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning are essential to your business. Business continuity planning should zero in on business processes, while disaster recovery planning should basically revolve around the technology that allows you to respond and recover from emergencies, disasters, cyber-attacks and other threats. The Business Impact Analysis pulls from the Enterprise Risk Management process, the Business Continuity Plan is a series of contingency actions. The Business Continuity Management System framework is the system that stitches activities together.
In that regard, business impact analysis will certainly enable organizations in identifying the critical business processes premised on their resultant repercussions during a disruption. The disaster recovery plan (DRP) make use of data from the BIA to determine a plan in order to improve upon the recovery process by establishing the key people as well as the essential procedures to fundamentally undertake the recovery. Finally, business continuity planning (BCP) will also help organizations reevaluate their well-developed BIA and DRP plans to make sure that the organization is realizing it’s strategic objectives. Whereas each of the three are being regarded as separate components in the IT environment.
I agree with you that each of these three is considered a separate component of the IT environment. But I think it is more relevant that they are interdependent. A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) describes the steps that must be taken in the event of an outage or disruption, while a BIA identifies the risks that could lead to an outage and the business-critical functions that could be affected by an outage and prioritizes those recoveries. the BCP looks not only at the technical operations, but also at the people and other resources associated with business continuity.
The relationship between Business Impact Analysis (BIA) a disaster recovery plan (DR) and business continuity management (BCM) needs to be active and continuous. The BIA identifies the processes and functions that need to be prioritized in the DR planning functions. Finally the BCM process needs to ensure that the BIA and DR plan are current and accurate. Lastly the BCM process needs to ensure the DR plan is functional, up to date and actionable.
Thanks for sharing Richard I believe active and continuous is a good way to describe the relationship. The relationship requires collaboration from all three areas and a failure to execute in just one of these areas during an incident could have an adverse impact to the recovery process and could be catastrophic for an organization.
The relationship is when the plan takes effect. For example, business continuity requires keeping your operations up and running during and immediately after an event. Disaster recovery focuses on how you respond after the event is complete and how you get back to normal. While both functionally include an “after the fact” response, disaster recovery is about getting yourself back to where you started before the event. Although they overlap, they still operate differently.
What is the relationship between business impact analysis, a disaster recovery plan, and business continuity management?
The relationship between business impact analysis, disaster recovery, and business continuity management is to help prepare and guide an organization in case a disaster happens. However, BIA, DR, and business continuity management ties together and come hand in hand but maintain different goals.
For example, business continuity management is built around a business process, while disaster recovery is planning to respond to an emergency situation in a timely manner and efficiently.
Business Impact Analysis is the process of ensuring operational resilience and continuity of operations during and after a business disruption and is designed to determine the importance of business activities and associated resource requirements. A business continuity plan is designed to ensure that business-critical functions can continue to work with minimal downtime in the event of an outage, while a disaster recovery plan (DR plan) considers how to restore business processes within a certain time frame in the event of a disaster – the recovery time objective (RTO). They are interdependent, with the key difference being when the plan takes effect. Business continuity requires that you keep operations up and running during and immediately after an event. Disaster recovery focuses on how you respond and how you get back to normal after the event is complete.
While a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) describes the steps that must be taken in the event of an outage or disruption, a BIA identifies the risks that could lead to an outage and the critical business functions that could be affected by the outage and prioritize those recoveries. BIA lays the foundation for a reliable business continuity plan and prepares the organization for the inevitable effort required to recover from a business disruption. The BCP focuses not only on technical operations, such as hardware/software issues. It also considers the people and other resources associated with business continuity.
Great points raised, Dan. I think in some ways it is the heart of the disaster recovery planning process because it is during the business impact analysis you will determine the precise effects of disaster on your organization.
BIAs are usually performed after the DR project has been launched and prior to starting risk assessments. The BIA aims to identify critical business functions and the impact of a disruption to them and provides an important starting point for defining disaster recovery strategies that are used to respond to disruptive events. A business continuity plan is a broad plan designed to keep a business running, even in the event of a disaster. This plan focuses on the business but drills down to specific scenarios that might create operational risks.
Business impact analysis, disaster recovery plan, and business continuity management all go hand in hand because they are important steps in the overall process of an organization responding to disaster. During the DR plan, BIA is an essential step that must be taken to prepare for business interruptions by developing a plan to surmount them as quickly and effectively as possible. Business continuity management is then the ability for an organization to continue following a disruptive incident. It is a process of creating systems to deal with threats during the prevention phase, and to enable ongoing operation during disaster recovery. Basically, it is the intended outcome following disaster recovery. All three of these components are relatable because they must all be properly handled in order to prepare for and potentially recover from disaster.
I think it’s easy to mix these terms to each other. Business continuity programs are ensuring business functions the ones are critical, so they can continue without any disruption or minimal downtime. However, recovery plan deals with the restoring business processes in the event of disaster. The business impact analysis is totally different where you analyze the possible impact of incidents before event occurs. Business impact analysis – BIA – has positive effect to business continuity plan where it lays the foundation for solid continuity plan by analyzing the possible company effort might needed in incidents.
The relationship between BIA, DR, and business continuity management is how each document informs the other to distribute resources best to focus recovery efforts on the functions and assets most critical to the business. Disaster recovery provides an actionable plan to restore operations as quickly as possible, whereas business continuity is the strategic vision that guides disaster recovery. Lastly, as stated by Vacca, the business impact analysis calculates and accounts for “processes, loss, and cost related to catastrophic events,” which drives the formal execution of business continuity and disaster recovery. Thereby, the BIA identifies what we are recovering, the DR plan details how we are recovering and business continuity explains why are recovering a particular asset/function.
Vacca, J., 2017. Computer and Information Security Handbook. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Morgan Kaufmann.
The Business impact analysis is part of the business continuity management and identifies critical systems and services. The disaster recovery plan ensures that procedures are adhered to, and processes to restore critical systems in the event of the disaster are underway. The disaster recovery plan is a part of the bigger BCP. The business impact analysis captures the specific business process of each department and identifies the personnel necessary to support each other in the process. Business continuity focuses on keeping business operational during a disaster, while disaster recovery focuses on restoring data access and IT infrastructure after a disaster. The disaster recovery plan typically refers to the plans in place to restore essential information technology systems and applications that enable critical business processes. Business continuity plans establish how each business process is performed while IT systems are down. Helps to identify the people and vendors needed to support each other in the process and determine what equipment is needed to perform various job functions.
The relationship between BIA, DR and BCM: To me, these go hand in hand on helping an organization handle an issue like natural disaster, data breach or any other event. The BIA can help predict the consequences of a disruption/ outage; BIA will gather the info needed for a recovery strategy. The business continuity management will deal with keeping the business going during such event and the disaster recovery process then follows guidelines and protocols to get the business back up and running once the event has completed.
Hello Corey,
Well, said. These three elements go hand in hand. While the BIA creates visibility on consequences of disruptions, Business Continuity Management is the overall process for ensuring business continuity through implementing the Disaster Recovery plan. Accurate.
A disaster recovery plan is a company’s document of instructions on how employees and the company should act in the case of an unplanned disaster. A business impact analysis determines what the consequences are of a disruption in a company’s normal work flow. Business continuity management involves identifying risks to the company and possible threats the company may be exposed to. The relationship between the three concepts are that they all involve identifying a risk that the company faces, the potential losses the company may suffer if they come in contact with this risk, and formulating a plan on how to mitigate the impact of these risks or avoid them entirely.
Business impact analysis is performed to identify the impact that could cause to the organization from the distribution. It could be the financial loss and/or the reputation. The disaster recovery plan is created to help business overcome the any unexpected situation. The impacts identified during the business impact analysis would be help while creating the disaster recovery plan. As it could help identify the critical service of the business which then later could be described to have it up and running before other non-critical services within the disaster recovery plan. Business continuity is a framework to identify the risk within the business. It also provides the ability for the effectively identify and execute the disaster recovery plan and business impact analysis.
Hi Vraj! Great points, I agree with you. Business continuity operations all tie together hand-in-hand–proving that an organization needs to invest in a holistic business continuity program in order to be sufficiently prepared for a disaster.
I really think of the relationship between a business impact analysis (BIA), a disaster recovery plan (DRP) and business continuity management as cyclical. A BIA will determine organizational needs (ie services, support and operations) that are critical to basic continuation of a company’s services. Points defined in a BIA will be addressed and considered when creating/revising a DRP; a successful DRP needs to consider the necessary objectives to business continuity, which is found through BIA’s and risk assessments. Lastly, tasks such as conducting a business continuity/disaster recovery test during proper business continuity management consider points addressed in both BIA’s and DRP’s; but, data extrapolated from business continuity management activities will also be used to better the BIA process and improve a DRP. When it comes down to it, business continuity as a whole is a science; always improving through testing, observing, and analyzing.
Hello Lauren
I concur with your position that “Business Continuity as a whole is a science, always improving through testing, observing and analyzing” for the under-listed reasons.
1. Observation, In the sense that the BIA is based on observing risks applicable to identified assets to arrive at the impact or consequence.
2. Testing, based on the fact that risk assessment is meant to ascertain whether controls on the ground can identify and mitigate itemized risk in the process by testing their effectiveness
3.. Lastly, Analysis. The BIA is derived from analyzing the consequences of an incident based on its probability of occurring. This is the platform upon which business continuity and disaster recovery are built and implemented, rightly described as an evolving science.
The relationship between business impact analysis, a disaster recovery plan and business continuity management is :
• Business Impact Analysis helps organizations define and prioritize areas that the disaster recovery plan should address
• The disaster recovery plan is implemented by the organization, helping their business continuity management
• Business continuity remains intact in the case of a business disruption (natural disaster, loss of life, etc.)
Hey Andrew,
That’s a good post. Business impact analysis does helps business prioritize the area the disaster recovery plan should address. It also evaluated all the other areas as well so the business would have idea of what process and systems they would be running. Business Impact Analysis function is to evaluate all the areas of the areas of the business to find out how the business would be affected due to any type of disruption.
The Business Impact Analysis (BIA) examines every division of the company and details its exposure to potential disasters, required business functions to navigate such disasters, and how long it can survive during a disaster with access to critical infrastructure only. This analysis informs the Disaster Recovery Plan which is how the organization will respond to the disaster and provides a playbook for the organization that outlines roles, responsibilities, and critical infrastructure that needs to be available. Business continuity management is the process of continually reviewing the organization’s DRP and BIA and identifying changes that should be made in response to new information and/or test outcomes.
Hi Matt,
I think it’s very important that you’ve pointed out that the business continuity management is continually reviewing the DRP and BIA. These both are plans that need to be as up to date in case of an unforeseen event. If they haven’t been properly tested or updated with new information like you’ve mentioned then they are essentially useless for an organization.
The relationship between these 3 are pretty much the same because they are all playing a significant role in helping an organization recovers from an unplanned incident. To me, all employees not just the IT people must be involved in participating and creating a well detailed plan to keep the business operating in case a natural disaster happens. For example, business continuity focuses on keeping business operational during a disaster, while disaster recovery focuses on restoring data access and responding immediately to a natural disaster such as power outages or any other disruptive events.
Overall, any organization must come up with a good strategy analyzing all critical business processes and be prepared to restore data access in order to keep the business going in case an unplanned incident happens.
Hello Ornella,
I agree that all three play a role in helping an organization recover from an unplanned incident. All three incidents involve identifying a risk that the company faces, the potential losses the company may suffer if they come in contact with this risk, and formulating a plan on how to mitigate the impact of these risks or avoid them entirely. It is important for an organization to come up with the right strategy to keep the business resuming in the case that an unplanned incident occurs.
A BIA identifies the impact of a sudden loss of business functions, usually cost to the business. A BIA also identifies the most critical business functions, which allows you to create a disaster recovery plan that prioritizes the recovery of these essential functions. For example, business continuity focuses on keeping business operational during a disaster, while disaster recovery focuses on restoring data access and IT infrastructure after a disaster.
A disaster recovery plan is always based on and created on the findings of the Business Impact Analysis.
Business continuity management (BCM) is a guide for identifying an organization’s risk of exposure to internal and external threats. BCM includes disaster recovery, business recovery, crisis management, incident management, emergency management, and contingency planning. The Business Impact Analysis is a source for creating data for the business continuity plan, a sub-component of the overall Business Continuity Management.
Business Impact Analysis (BIA) predicts the consequences of interruption of a business function and process and gathers information needed to develop recovery strategies. Disaster Recovery (DR) plan is a formal document created by an organization that covers thorough instructions on how to respond to unexpected incidents such as natural disasters, power outages, cyber attacks, etc. Business Continuity Management (BCM) is the advanced planning and preparation of an organization to continuing business functions or quickly resuming after a disaster has occurred. The relationship between all three functions is that they are step-by-step plans that consists of the protections to minimize the effects of a disaster so the organization can continue to operate or quickly resume mission-critical functions.
The relationship between each share similar processes but facilitate different functions during tragic catastrophes that jeopardize organizations. The Business Impact Analysis identifies key processes and assets that help field Disaster Recovery Processes to bring the organization back into operation. The BIA subsequently identifies which systems will be impacted due to events, and which processes can remain normal during recovery stages. This in return allows the organization to develop continuity management processes such as internal networks segregated from external networks that are afflicted to keep some processes moving forward or prioritize other processes in the event of disaster while disaster recovery teams are working.
The Disaster Recovery Plan would specify the procedures to bring the organization back into normal operations; and continuity management would identify what operations can still function while in recovery. The Business Impact Analysis helps make both of these processes relational as what resources are available and which are in recovery and the prioritization of both resources would be specified. This in return allows the organization to efficiently make use of all resources while recovering from disaster and try to avoid the business decision to close business.
I like your comment about specifying what applications should still function and just as importantly which applications would NOT be a focus of recovery efforts during the recovery phase. It can be just as important to know what NOT to focus on vs what to focus on in that often chaotic recovery phase.
The relationship between a disaster recovery plan and a business impact analysis is that the business impact analysis is conducted first before the disaster recover plan is fully developed. The information gathered during the business impact analysis informs and shapes the disaster recovery plan. These relate to business continuity management in that they supplement the continuity process of an organization. The DRP and BIA are part of the business continuity process. Together they both help identify the steps in which certain areas of the business will recover and continue to function in the event of a major unforeseen disruption.
Hello Ryan,
Great point about the BIA being conducted before the DRP is fully developed
Business impact analysis, disaster recovery plans, and business continuity management are related to each other in many ways. BIA aids in identifying which steps in a disaster recovery plan are most important, which steps should be acted upon first, and which assets are most important to protect. Both BIA and a DRP are critical to business continuity management because BCM only really comes into place when a disaster occurs and business continuity is halted, and this is also the time where a DRP (written and focused around findings in a BIA) would be acted upon to continue business operations as quickly as possible and minimize loss.
Hi Michael,
Great points. I see it the same way, all 3 are closely related to each other. Both BIA and DRP essentially help to make up BCM, as you said they come into play when a disaster occurs and the business can not functionally operate. These plans will help keep the business running while the disaster is occurring and help deal with the aftermath.
The business impact analysis is a tool that’s used to come up with recovery objectives and priorities.
The disaster recovery plan is used to achieve the goal of rectifying the disaster and its ramifications right after the disaster strikes; the disaster recovery plan is usually very Information Technology (IT) focused.
Business continuity management is a holistic management process that should cover both disaster recovery and business continuity planning. However, business continuity management provides a framework for integrating resilience with the capability for effective responses in a manner that protects the interests of an organization’s key stakeholders. The main goal of business continuity management is to allow the organization to continue to perform business operations under various conditions.
Hi Joshua, thanks for explaining. I agree with your point. The main goal of BCM is to make sure the organization continues to run no matter what the situation or problems may be.
What is the relationship between business impact analysis, a disaster recovery plan and business continuity management?
A business impact analysis, disaster recovery plan, and business continuity management are closely related as they are all part of business continuity and essentially risk management at large. After creating proper risk assessments, the three of these operations can function cohesively to support and manage business continuity in the event of some disaster. With the risks identified throughout each sector for each individual critical business function, a business impact analysis will help outline the major dependencies that are responsible for allowing these critical business functions to continue operating. Upon making these dependencies resilient, the disaster recovery plan can be constructed to manage business continuity as it details the (hopefully) tested procedures to bring these redundancies online and fully operational, ensuring business continuity with minimal impact to the organization’s revenue from downtime, reputation, and ensuring legal compliance.
A business impact analysis sets the stage for disaster recovery planning. Those systems with severe impacts should be carefully considered, prioritized, and outlined within the DRP. For example, if multiple systems go down, the DRP should outline which systems need immediate attention and need to be switched back on ASAP, and which systems are not as crucial.
The DRP and BIA would be continually revised by business continuity management, so the organization has the most updated version of this plan and analysis in case of an emergency. Management’s decision making process would be impacted by the BIA (as they prioritize which systems to get back online ASAP), and the DRP (as they execute on the plan in an event of an emergency).
Madalyn,
I think that describing BIA as setting the stage for DRP is a great way to explain their relationship. I also agree with the point that BCM involves continually updating both of them, as the end goal of BCM is making sure a business can get through and recover from disaster.
Mike
Hello Madalyn.
Truly. “A business impact analysis sets the stage for disaster recovery planning.” A disaster recovery plan is built on the finding of a BIA wherein the consequences of disruptions to mission-critical processes are clearly articulated. As a result of these stated consequences, visibility is created to create a plan to remediate or mitigate (Disaster Recovery plan).
Both, however, fall under the oversight and umbrella of Business continuity management, which encompasses all programs, processes, and activities geared towards asset protection and business continuity.
Business continuity management encompasses a disaster recovery plan in its process. With a business continuity management it helps. organize the entire scope of how the business longevity plan, this includes planning for prevention, a disaster recovery plan and a rebuild phase for when a disaster recovery plan occurs. A disaster recovery plan encompasses a business impact analysis as it is used in the recovery plan to know what system core functions are most crucial for business operations to help prioritize and asses system core functions in a reasonable time frame. They are all intertwined within each other.
We explained that a disaster recovery plan is a strategy that allows an organization to keep running during an unforeseen event. For a disaster recovery plan to be successful you need to identify the key areas of the business, the key areas being the most critical aspects that cause a disruption like a hack or natural disaster. For me the relationship between a DRP and BIA is the same, you perform a BIA as part of the DRP. Similarly, business continuity management deals with an organization’s ability to provide goods/services after a disaster. Business continuity planning usually beings with business impact assessments, and so all three have a close relation to one another. I will say they differ with their end goals, business continuity will focus on keeping things running during the event where disaster recovery will focus on responding to the aftermath.
I completely agree that they all have their different end goals. I suppose that’s why they are separate processes. I like to look at the BIA as more of a process that gives substance rather than instructions on how to keep an organization running/recover. Both plans have to work in parallel with each other for the business to be efficient and mitigate disaster.
The business impact analysis (BIA) helps organizations determine the critical business processes based on their impact during a disruption. The disaster recovery plan (DRP) utilizes data from the BIA to develop a plan in order to optimize the recovery process by identifying the necessary people as well as the necessary steps to actually perform the recovery. Finally, business continuity planning (BCP) helps organizations reassess their established BIA and DRP plans to ensure the organization is meeting it’s strategic objectives. While each of the three are considered separate components in the IT environment it’s critical to holistically review and test each area to ensure the business can adequately recover and remain operating in the event of a disaster.
What is the relationship between business impact analysis, a disaster recovery plan and business continuity management?
I believe the relationship between business impact analysis, disaster recovery plan and business continuity management is that they all play a critical role in making sure a business survives a disaster in the best way possible.
The DRP is the planning stage for a disaster, an overall what to do list. The BIA is identifying which systems are critical and knowing the order in which they need to come back online. The BCM is the getting back to normal stage/ rebuilding stage. All 3 of these processes play a major role in the recovery of a business.
Both business continuity planning and disaster recovery planning are essential to your business. Business continuity planning should zero in on business processes, while disaster recovery planning should basically revolve around the technology that allows you to respond and recover from emergencies, disasters, cyber-attacks and other threats. The Business Impact Analysis pulls from the Enterprise Risk Management process, the Business Continuity Plan is a series of contingency actions. The Business Continuity Management System framework is the system that stitches activities together.
In that regard, business impact analysis will certainly enable organizations in identifying the critical business processes premised on their resultant repercussions during a disruption. The disaster recovery plan (DRP) make use of data from the BIA to determine a plan in order to improve upon the recovery process by establishing the key people as well as the essential procedures to fundamentally undertake the recovery. Finally, business continuity planning (BCP) will also help organizations reevaluate their well-developed BIA and DRP plans to make sure that the organization is realizing it’s strategic objectives. Whereas each of the three are being regarded as separate components in the IT environment.
I agree with you that each of these three is considered a separate component of the IT environment. But I think it is more relevant that they are interdependent. A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) describes the steps that must be taken in the event of an outage or disruption, while a BIA identifies the risks that could lead to an outage and the business-critical functions that could be affected by an outage and prioritizes those recoveries. the BCP looks not only at the technical operations, but also at the people and other resources associated with business continuity.
The relationship between Business Impact Analysis (BIA) a disaster recovery plan (DR) and business continuity management (BCM) needs to be active and continuous. The BIA identifies the processes and functions that need to be prioritized in the DR planning functions. Finally the BCM process needs to ensure that the BIA and DR plan are current and accurate. Lastly the BCM process needs to ensure the DR plan is functional, up to date and actionable.
Thanks for sharing Richard I believe active and continuous is a good way to describe the relationship. The relationship requires collaboration from all three areas and a failure to execute in just one of these areas during an incident could have an adverse impact to the recovery process and could be catastrophic for an organization.
The relationship is when the plan takes effect. For example, business continuity requires keeping your operations up and running during and immediately after an event. Disaster recovery focuses on how you respond after the event is complete and how you get back to normal. While both functionally include an “after the fact” response, disaster recovery is about getting yourself back to where you started before the event. Although they overlap, they still operate differently.
What is the relationship between business impact analysis, a disaster recovery plan, and business continuity management?
The relationship between business impact analysis, disaster recovery, and business continuity management is to help prepare and guide an organization in case a disaster happens. However, BIA, DR, and business continuity management ties together and come hand in hand but maintain different goals.
For example, business continuity management is built around a business process, while disaster recovery is planning to respond to an emergency situation in a timely manner and efficiently.
Business Impact Analysis is the process of ensuring operational resilience and continuity of operations during and after a business disruption and is designed to determine the importance of business activities and associated resource requirements. A business continuity plan is designed to ensure that business-critical functions can continue to work with minimal downtime in the event of an outage, while a disaster recovery plan (DR plan) considers how to restore business processes within a certain time frame in the event of a disaster – the recovery time objective (RTO). They are interdependent, with the key difference being when the plan takes effect. Business continuity requires that you keep operations up and running during and immediately after an event. Disaster recovery focuses on how you respond and how you get back to normal after the event is complete.
While a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) describes the steps that must be taken in the event of an outage or disruption, a BIA identifies the risks that could lead to an outage and the critical business functions that could be affected by the outage and prioritize those recoveries. BIA lays the foundation for a reliable business continuity plan and prepares the organization for the inevitable effort required to recover from a business disruption. The BCP focuses not only on technical operations, such as hardware/software issues. It also considers the people and other resources associated with business continuity.
Great points raised, Dan. I think in some ways it is the heart of the disaster recovery planning process because it is during the business impact analysis you will determine the precise effects of disaster on your organization.
BIAs are usually performed after the DR project has been launched and prior to starting risk assessments. The BIA aims to identify critical business functions and the impact of a disruption to them and provides an important starting point for defining disaster recovery strategies that are used to respond to disruptive events. A business continuity plan is a broad plan designed to keep a business running, even in the event of a disaster. This plan focuses on the business but drills down to specific scenarios that might create operational risks.
https://www.computerweekly.com/podcast/Business-impact-analysis-BIA-at-heart-of-disaster-recovery-planning
Business impact analysis, disaster recovery plan, and business continuity management all go hand in hand because they are important steps in the overall process of an organization responding to disaster. During the DR plan, BIA is an essential step that must be taken to prepare for business interruptions by developing a plan to surmount them as quickly and effectively as possible. Business continuity management is then the ability for an organization to continue following a disruptive incident. It is a process of creating systems to deal with threats during the prevention phase, and to enable ongoing operation during disaster recovery. Basically, it is the intended outcome following disaster recovery. All three of these components are relatable because they must all be properly handled in order to prepare for and potentially recover from disaster.
I think it’s easy to mix these terms to each other. Business continuity programs are ensuring business functions the ones are critical, so they can continue without any disruption or minimal downtime. However, recovery plan deals with the restoring business processes in the event of disaster. The business impact analysis is totally different where you analyze the possible impact of incidents before event occurs. Business impact analysis – BIA – has positive effect to business continuity plan where it lays the foundation for solid continuity plan by analyzing the possible company effort might needed in incidents.