The goal of a traditional BIA is sound in theory—to identify and prioritize the business’ critical processes relative to the losses that would result from their interruption, and then, to convince management to fund the most cost- and operationally-effective architecture to recover those processes in the aftermath of a disaster.
However, in practice, the BIA process repeatedly fails to produce the desired results and in virtually every instance we have seen, it delays and complicates the recovery planning process. We believe that there are at least ten fatal flaws in the traditional BIA process. A traditional BIA is too often an artificial project that is intended simply to convince management to invest in DR/BC by painting a picture of abstract risk and losses. The BIA needs to be redesigned to reveal the detailed process and application information that is mandatory to craft the most cost-effective and workable final solution. It must produce data that will enable the design of much more finely tuned recovery strategies which in turn will offer much better recoverability at a much lower price point…strategies that will take maximum advantage of existing resources and infrastructure and support the business’ process requirements in the most functional and cost-effective manner.
It’s time for a faster, more accurate, less expensive approach that actually reduces your DR/BC costs. An approach that is faster and costs less. An approach that produces 10X the data of a traditional BIA with 1/10th the impact on your staff. An approach that produces top-down and bottom-up consensus…maybe for the first time. An approach that improves RTOs and RPOs with technique instead of spending. An approach that produces far more accurate data that can be dynamically modeled ATOD (At Time of Disaster) to create a unique recovery map for each unique event all while dynamically adjusting for ATOD ripple-effects.
It’s time to dump your BIA!