When you die you’re dead – BIA style
By: Christophe Bertrand on March 9, 2009
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My colleague and friend Dennis Wenk stopped by the other day to show me an abstract he wrote about operational risk and BC (note: there are a few papers on this subject on our website). The focus of our discussion was operational risk vs. business impact analysis and the usefulness of such tools, as well as the broad misconceptions we see out there. Case in point: I recently heard of a backup vendor (who shall remain nameless) touting a seminar on how a BIA reduces your operational risk. Serious heresy if you ask Dennis. Operational risk assessments have nothing to do with BIAs and quite frankly, one could argue that an OR assessment starts where a BIA stops.
To me a BIA is pretty much saying: when you fall down the stairs, you will hurt your leg, your arm, and your head. While an OR assessment will help you identify when you’re likely to fall down the stairs and how to mitigate the risk of it occurring. For example, on a rainy day after a few cold ones, wearing slippery shoes, you are more likely to fall (BTW, never happened to me, it’s just an example). Simply put, a BIA looks at the worst case scenario.
So as Mr. Wenk puts it, “When you die, you’re dead.” Ask yourself, how useful is a BIA?
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