Business impact analysis
Business impact analysis (BIA) is the activity performed by ITSCM, often
together with availability management, that works with the business to
understand the impact on the organisation of suffering degraded service or losing
an IT service or component. The analysis will identify business functions that are critical to the success of the organisation (VBFs) and it is these functions that ITSCM must protect from the impact of an IT failure. The business will define the recovery requirement for these functions that ITSCM must address through its IT continuity plans. Over time, the importance of business functions can change and new ones appear, so ITSCM must undertake regular BIA exercises and feed the results back into the continuity plans to ensure they remain
appropriate and up to date.