What is a business impact analysis and what does it determine?

A business impact analysis, or BIA, identifies critical business functions and quantifies the impact of their disruption over time. It determines the maximum tolerable downtime for each function, the recovery time objective setting when the function must be restored, the recovery point objective setting the maximum acceptable data loss, and the dependencies between functions including systems, personnel, and suppliers. The BIA drives all continuity planning because it establishes which functions are most critical and how quickly they must recover.