Week 4 Lab: Assessment Worksheet Performing a Business Impact Analysis for an IT Infrastructure Overview Answer the following questions, specific to the creation and focus of Business Impact Analysis as well as BCP documentation. Lab Assessment Questions & Answers 1. What is the goal and purpose of a BIA? To identify which business units, operations and process are crucial to the survival of the business. A timeframe in which business functionality must be restored. Also identifies resources that will be necessary for business functionality. 2. Why is a business impact analysis (BIA) an important first step in defining a business continuity plan (BCP)? The BIA identifies the critical and …show more content…
Do all critical employees understand their role should an outage/disaster occur? Are there third party vendors that need to be considered in the BIA? Is there an alternate site available, should the current building not survive? Is data stored at an off-site facility? 6. How does a BCP help mitigate risk? With planning and testing a business will be prepared in the event of a disaster. The BCP acts as steps to take to get the business back to functionality. 7. What kind of risk does a BCP help mitigate? The interruption of business critical operations or process. The BCP helps in planning and testing of procedures to allow business to continue during a disaster. The prevention of lost data, and services not available for customers. 8. If you have business liability insurance, asset replacement insurance, and natural disaster insurance, do you still need a BCP or DRP? Why or why not? Yes, the BCP’s objective is to get business back to functioning normally, The DRP is focused on restoring and recovering IT functions of the business. Insurance may replace buildings, equipment, but without plans where would the business start to get back to functionality? Those are the questions that are answered by the BCP and DRP. 9. What does a BIA help define for a BCP? By defining the critical and non-critical process/operations of a business. 10. Who should participate in the
while the rest of the Business Continuity Plan (BCP) kicks in. A BCP has a much broader scope and takes
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR or BC/DR) are closely related practices that describe an organization's preparation for unforeseen risks to continued operations. The trend of combining business continuity and disaster recovery into a single term has resulted from a growing recognition that both business executives and technology executives need to be collaborating closely instead of developing plans in isolation.
The overall objective of the BIA is to identify the impact of outages. More specifically, the goal is to identify the critical functions that can affect the organization. After these you can identify the critical resources that support these functions. Each resource has a MAO and impact if it fails. The ultimate goal is to identify the recovery requirements.
Why is a business impact analysis (BIA) an important first step in defining a business continuity plan (BCP)? It is important because the BCP is what to do after the failure occurs and the BIA is predicting what the failure could be.
This plan includes a short summary of the most important data obtained from the BIA, such as the business unit, responsible manager, process/business function, recovery time objective (RTO), and estimated daily financial losses. Have it approved by senior management. Why? Because it will almost certainly require funding, and your senior management needs to know at least the estimated cost before they can approve it.
Packaging X must have a plan in place to implement the previously discussed business continuity plan (BCP). The implementation plan is important as these plans can reveal new issues and challenges that may not have been originally anticipated. The plan is used to help minimize any impact of disruption and to ready all employees. The risks identified earlier include:
The first order of business is development of a Business Continuity Plan (BCP) it is vital to first understand the business processes and its impact on the DLA and DOD. While not all tasks and processes are deemed critical, all of the inter-related operations of the DLIS are requisite to service the mission.
The purpose of the BCP is to ensure that mission-critical elements of DLIS continue to operate after an operational service disruption. Disruptions are any event that has the potential to stop operations. BCPs are implemented when service disruptions occur or are imminent. BCPs then stay in stated until normal operations are restored.
Of the three Systems/Application Domain risks, threats, and vulnerabilities identified, which one requires a disaster recovery plan and a business continuity plan to maintain continued operations during a catastrophic outage?
Disasters have become an inevitable part of businesses and organizations as well. They not only have a major effect on business and organizational continuity; they also result to an overhaul in organizational operational mechanisms (Awasthy, 2009). It is for this reason that many organizations and business resort to preparing business continuity plans and disaster recovery plans that will facilitate better disaster management in future. Effective disaster recovery plans are important to every business and organization (Thejendra, 2008).
As a consultant brought into an organization concerned about business continuity I would recommend to first perform a Risk Assessment Analysis and/or Business Impact Analysis (BIA). Conducting a business impact analysis will allow an organization to know the system or application’s downtime tolerance. The analysis will identify all systems and applications that can experience little to no downtime. Conducting risk assessment analysis will allow the organization to identify all the risks at the beginning and during the life of the organization, and grade the risks in terms of likelihood of occurring and seriousness of impact on the organization. Either analysis is an excellent tool and will result in the beginning creations of disaster recovery and business continuity planning. If using the BIA method a good first step is identifying the business’ most crucial systems and processes to assess what effect the outages will have on the business. All systems or applications should have a back-up location offsite to ensure business continuity. The higher the impact the more money a company should spend in order to quickly gain restoration of their business.
Owning a business can have many stressors day to day. When starting a business there is a lot of planning and preparation involved. Many small businesses are owners who have put their own money into the business and look at it as an investment. Unfortunately with all the planning that goes into starting a business, one thing is often over looked. Most of the time the “what ifs”, are not part of the planning stage. One reason for this is that people do not like to think of the bad things that could or may happen. So with all the time and planning put into starting a business why not put some extra thought into a plan B if a disaster strikes? This plan B could be a business continuity plan or a disaster recovery plan. Business continuity plans are an essential part of the modern day business. There are so many potential disasters for small businesses that could seize the production or even close the business down for good. A recent study from Gartner Inc., found that “90% of companies that experience data loss go out of business within two years. It also found that 80% of company owners have not thought about how they would keep their businesses up and running if a data disaster occurs.” According to the Association of Records Managers and Administrators, “about 60 percent of businesses that experience a major disaster such as a fire close
The ongoing evaluations of the business continuity plan (BCP) covers areas like considering all possible threats, testing the plans, analyzing key dependencies and interdependencies, reevaluating the recovery plans already in place, and checking alternate sites for IT backup. “Having a BCP enhances an organization 's image with employees, shareholders and customers by demonstrating a proactive attitude. Additional benefits include improvement in overall organizational efficiency and identifying the relationship of assets and human and financial resources to critical services and deliverables (Minister of Public Works, 2015).” Major policy and procedural changes will only need to take place if
We worked with the utility to perform a BIA to identify critical business processes, the likelihood of service disruption, and the projected cost of loss. We then helped the utility understand the business risks of systems and technology services interruption.
Business continuity and disaster recovery are not new concepts to organizations (Snedaker, 2007), BCP and DRP are most need for any organization but the act of consciously planning and getting ready for potential issues certainly has been underscored by disastrous occasions in the past decade including quakes, tornados, and terrorist assaults.