Business impact analysis

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Business impact analysis (BIA) is an information-gathering exercise designed to methodically identify:

1. The processes or functions performed by an organization
2. The resources required to support each process performed
3. Interdependencies between processes and/or departments
4. The impact of failing to perform a process
5. The criticality of each process
6. A recovery time objective (RTO) for each process
7. A recovery point objective (RPO) for the data that supports each process

Often performed as a step in the development of business continuity plans, the BIA, along with risk analysis (RA), provides the foundation for developing and selecting a business continuation strategy that will allow the organization to continue to perform critical processes in the event of a disruption.