Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery - Business Impact Analysis
Business impact analysis is a critical part of the business continuity planning process. This step quantifies data and gets into the real world issue of potential losses that can negatively impact your business. It is used to understand the most important impacts and how to best protect your people, processes, data, communications, assets and the organization's goodwill and reputation.
Organizations often think in terms of disaster recovery. Business continuity and the business impact analysis is more focused on keeping the business up and running and less focused on recovery after a disaster. The business impact analysis also is not focused only on the potential disasters, but on all potentially critical discontinuities. Key elements of the Business Impact Analysis are to identify critical business functions, establish the maximum acceptable outage time for each of these functions and then to determine the impact of not performing those functions. This can be measured against regulatory, legal, financial, operations or customer service requirements.
Once the adequacy of security and controls is evaluated and critical business functions and outage times are defined, the business continuity planner needs to develop an understanding of the probability of threats factored by the severity or impact and to start to develop a cost benefit analysis of the largest impact and highest probability threats.
It's virtually impossible to create an absolute value and prioritization of threats and impacts. Generally, a relational system is used to drive out the key priorities. Often, each threat is evaluated according to its probability and assigned a 1, 5 or 10 rating. Then, each threat is evaluated according to its impact on critical business functions and on the business overall. For example, a discontinuity in a critical business function of less than one hour might receive a value of 0. A discontinuity of one to eight hours might be ranked a 1, eight to twenty four hours might be ranked a 2 and over 24 hours might be ranked a 3. Obviously, these rankings need to be developed on a company specific basis. Probability factored by impact creates the relational prioritization list.
This approach to risk evaluation and control allows management to start to quantify the risks and potential impacts on the organization in a thoughtful and analytical way. This results not only in higher quality decisions, but also provides an audit trail that demonstrates that management is paying attention to its risk management responsibilities. These responsibilities might be established by regulatory or legal bodies, demanded as a contractual commitment by customers or simply expected by shareholders as sound and prudent management. The key corporate goals are to protect people, protect assets, protect data and to protect the brand and reputation of the organization.
About The Author
Robert Mahood has significant technology and management experience in data communications, internet, storage, disaster recovery and data recovery. He is currently the president of Midwest Data Recovery. www.midwestdatarecovery.com
bmahood@midwestdatarecovery.com, 312 907 2100 or 866 786 2595
MORE RESOURCES:
Data Recovery Service as a Solution American Chronicle, CA - Data recovery is the solution of it but in the rare cases even the data recovery associates nod their head to ´No´. These are the cases when the users ... The Way to Spot Out and Handle a Hard Drive Crash |
Regardless of Industry, Lack of a Real Time Data Recovery Plan is ... eCoustics.com (press release) - This familiar scenario can be avoided with the proper implementation of data recovery software that includes Microsoft® Office File Versioning. ... |
Data Recovery Services and Restoration Corsavoo.com, France - Data recovery relates to the many ways to extract data from inaccessible or otherwise damaged magnetic medium. Data recovery involves recovery of missing ... |
Hard drive recovery: Gives you a second chance! Corsavoo.com, France - What I have found out over the years is that almost everyone wants to try hard drive data recovery software, because it is cheaper, quicker, and private. ... |
iPod Solutions: Software for MP3 Data Recovery Corsavoo.com, France - iPod Solutions includes data recovery software programs which provide the facility of READ ONLY on the computer. These software programs are: ACD Digital ... |
Largest data recovery lab is in Novato Novato Advance, CA - By Paul Jones Drive Savers in Novato, one of the leading data-recovery companies in the country, recently began operating the largest data-recovery ... |
Data Recovery Software-How they Worth? American Chronicle, CA - There count numerous of reasons for the data loss but the relief is that the inaccessible data can be retrieved and data recovery software is the way to it. ... |
 Business Wire (press release) | DriveSavers Unveils Most Sophisticated Data Recovery Cleanroom ... Business Wire (press release), CA - (BUSINESS WIRE)--DriveSavers, the worldwide leader in data recovery services, invested over $2 million to build the most technologically advanced and ... |
Novato data recovery service cleanroom now even more clean Marin Independent-Journal, CA - Cleanroom manager Ed Sit displays a Compact Flash media card as he demonstrates the new room at DriveSavers Data Recovery in Novato, which recovers data ... |
Who are Data Recovery Experts? American Chronicle, CA - If you have ever lost your precious data and have searched the solutions of data recovery, then you must have encountered the term data recovery experts. ... |
Computer Data Backup - Data Backup Solution Will Give You A Peace Of Mind
Imagine that you have been working on a file for the entire day and there was a power surge that caused your computer to 'black out'. It would have been a frustrating experience for us as we had put in a lot of time and effort into it.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery - The Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan
Essentially, the plan addresses the who, what, where, why and when of recovery. Goal number one is to reduce the risk profile of the business.
Want To Beat The Odds? Disaster Recovery Planning is Essential
Statistics show two out of five businesses go out of business within five years of experiencing a major disaster.These statistics are staggering.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery - Reducing Your Risk Profile
Like all plans, there is an ultimate goal to achieve. The goal in a business continuity plan is simply that: to continue your business in the face of a disaster or a disruption.
Backup Schmackup: Im Afraid, Very Afraid!
"Why should you be afraid?", I can hear you ask.I just got an email from my friend Miche who said,"My laptop is sick at the hospital.
Data Backups - One Key to Business Survival
Your customer data is a precious resource that can literally be worth its weight in gold! If used properly, it can be mined over and over for additional sales and referrals. Do you use this gold mine to increase the profitability of your business?You should! It can mean the difference between business survival and failure.
How Secure Are Online Data Backups?
Processing DATA is what all businesses do. Protecting data is what SMART businesses do.
Did You Loose Your Windows XP Password? What Should You Have Done Before it Happened?
There is a common problem that happens with lot of computer users. This problem is the loss of a password.
Is Your Backup Good Enough?
As someone who has seen quite a few hard drive crashes over the years, I believe that performing a full backup of your computer's hard drive should be an important part of your weekly (if not daily) routine. There's nothing more frustrating & costly than trying to restore a computer with only a handful of Floppy disk drives, a couple of scratched CD-ROMs or poorly stored backup tapes.
Read This Now: Its Not If You Will Lose Your Data, Its When Will You Lose Your Data
With Adware, SpyWare, E-Mail Viruses, Java Script Viruses and Hardware failures It isn't a matter of If you will loose your Data it is a matter of When you will loose your Data! By spending a few extra minutes now using a Simple Back Up Strategy, you can save yourself big headaches later.You Should Always have a Full Backup of your Online Business Directory and all it's subdirectories for the Last 4 Weeks as well daily incremental backups for a month or More.
Computer Data Recovery Options
Losing files on your computer can be a frightening experience if the files are of importance to you personally or professionally. Computer data recovery techniques include the most simple of operations, like simply retrieving an accidentally deleted file, to very complex file retrieval procedures that only professionals should attempt to do.
HasYour Computer Hard Drive Ever Crashed? Are You Challenged by Backups?
The following scenario's have probably been repeated thousands of times, on computer systems of all kinds and sizes, operated by all levels of users from complete novice, to expert user.· You log on and your computer will not boot to your operating system.
Online Data Backups for Newbies
How long have you been doing business online? Whether you are new or an old timer you need to understand the one important truth of the e-world. That being that the largest threat to business survival is data loss.
Data Backup for Beginners
It's 10pm. Do you know where your data is?Data.
Disaster Recovery- Managing the Risk
Helping your business survive in the event of an unforeseen disaster: Most business failures are not from bad business but from bad business practices.Most companies that fail are the ones that have not planned how their business will continue to function in the event of a disaster.
Its All In The Planning - Surviving Disaster
ITS ALL IN THE PLANNING - PREPARING FOR THE UNTHINKABLE* Make it clear who needs to do what, and who takes responsibility for what.* Appoint deputies for key roles.
Protect Yourself Before Your Hard Drive Crashes
Almost everyone who has used a computer has experienced a hard drive problem at some point. Are you prepared to lose your data? If your hard drive crashes right now, do you have an action plan to follow?Most people get complacent about protecting the data on their computers.
Big Time Disaster Recovery Solutions Available for the Little Guy
There was a time - not too long ago - that Data Disaster Recovery solutions were available only in the domain of multinational corporations and big business in general. However, with the proliferation of high speed internet access and the ability to store large amounts of data in a much more cost effective manner due to plummeting storage costs, the ability to perform a secure backup of data to a remote location engineered specifically for the purpose of securely storing massive amounts of information is now in the reach of the general public.
Hard Drive Crash? The Essential Data Recovery Report
Your worst nightmare just became a horrifying reality. You keep hearing that little voice in your head mockingly shout "you should have backed that stuff up" The voice keeps echoing throughout your head as you perform a quick inventory all of the important information that you just lost?.
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery - Business Impact Analysis
Business impact analysis is a critical part of the business continuity planning process. This step quantifies data and gets into the real world issue of potential losses that can negatively impact your business.