Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

Definition - What does Business Impact Analysis (BIA) mean?

Business impact analysis (BIA) is a component of business continuity planning that helps to identify critical and non-critical systems. A business impact analysis also assigns consequences and usually a dollar figure to specific disaster scenarios. It will also include estimated recovery times and recovery requirements for such scenarios. The business impact analysis is often used to measure the risks of failure against the costs of upgrading a particular system.

Techopedia explains Business Impact Analysis (BIA)

A business impact analysis can work on several levels. An organization-wide BIA will identify large risks and their fallout, such as losing all the data on the company servers. A branch or department BIA will highlight the particular systems that are critical to those users and what would happen if they were unable to access them. The overall business continuity plan will contain steps for addressing any problems, but a BIA can be very helpful in spotting obvious weaknesses before they become serious issues.

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