What is BIA? What is its importance in Business Continuity?

BIA’s acronym refers to Business Impact Analysis

A BIA is carried out within the activities of a Business Continuity Management System (BCMS). Its formal definition is: “Process of analyzing the impact over time of a disruption on the organization”(ISO 22301: 2019, 3 Terms and definitions, 3.5).

In a BIA, the organization’s business processes are analyzed to know what impact is produced in the event of an incident that causes the interruption of these processes. The objective is to identify which are the most critical processes for the company.

Business continuity should focus on those processes in which availability is vital, i.e., in the event of being interrupted, the impact caused to the organization may not be acceptable in a short period of time.

For example, the service of the web portal of an entity for the sale of products over the Internet, which must operate 24 × 7, is not as critical as the marketing and advertising service of a beverage company, whose delivery of results is not continuous.

The BIA is carried out for all company processes, using a common methodology, in order to be able to compare the results and classify them by criticality.