A cyber breach can turn into a full-blown business disruption fast—and knowing what to do next can make all the difference. Responding to a Cyber Breach is a practical, plain-English guide designed to help organizations take control in the critical moments after an incident. It walks you through exactly how to contain the damage, communicate effectively, and restore operations without adding confusion or delay.

When you download the guide, you’ll learn how to:

• Secure your operations immediately by identifying affected systems and containing the breach before damage spreads
• Close security gaps fast by fixing vulnerabilities, validating backups, and documenting actions for legal or regulatory needs
• Notify the right people at the right time, including internal teams, customers, regulators, and law enforcement
• Restore systems and data safely using secure backup and recovery strategies that reduce downtime
• Turn the incident into a learning opportunity by strengthening response plans, training teams, and improving long-term resilience

Whether you’re preparing for a potential incident or responding to an active breach, this guide gives you a clear, step-by-step roadmap to protect your business, your customers, and your reputation.

Business continuity management (BCM) and business impact analysis (BIA) are essential parts of the BCM life cycle.

Planning a BIA project and preparing for annual initiatives should include the review of new updates and requirements within your organization and new events that have occurred throughout the year that may change your priorities. Download our checklist to make your BIA process easier.

Protecting Operations for Financial Institutions

The history of business continuity planning for banks and financial crises that inevitably impact banking institutions has taught us that nothing is 100 percent certain or safe. We can come up with analyses and forecasts, but a crisis can strike at any time. It can come in the form of natural catastrophes. Crises can also arise from human-made disasters, such as acts of terrorism, civil war, fraud in various forms and at different levels, cybercriminal attacks, technological failures, human error, and many others. This is why business continuity planning is such an essential company-wide responsibility. It involves the development of strategies designed to ensure the restoration of critical business processes, as well as the technical recovery of critical information systems integral to such functions during bank-wide service or operational disruptions. It plans for how critical processes, departments, information systems, and business units will work in tandem as a coordinated response to any disruption. For timely business resumption and recovery, there should be a tightly unified planning process involving each business unit’s plans and roles in the resumption of essential processes. This includes both short-term and long-term disruptions and subsequent recovery operations. Moreover, senior management must set the tone for everyone else that business continuity is an organizational responsibility, and not an information technology (IT) department matter for which only the IT function is liable.

The objectives of business continuity planning

Business continuity planning is essential to all companies during disruptions. In the banking industry, in particular, it aims to accomplish the following objectives:

• To reduce financial loss to the banking institution.
• To ensure customers and financial market participants continue to be served.
• To diminish the negative impact of disruptions on the bank’s reputation, market position, liquidity, credit quality, strategic plans, and operations.
• To maintain the bank’s ability to comply with applicable laws and regulations.

Today, technological innovation and changing internal and external business processes, as well as the emergence of new threat scenarios, require the continuous review and update of business continuity plans. A bank’s business continuity plan must always take into account regional disasters, and possible staff inaccessibility and losses. This is especially useful in the case of pandemics, such as epidemic-prone diseases like Ebola, influenza, and SARS, which affected several countries. Such outbreaks do not only impact staff availability but also affect customers who may become paralyzed with fear and panic, leading to increased delinquencies, higher internet banking volume, more requests for additional credit, and, at worst, bank runs.

The importance of impact analysis

An essential step in any business continuity plan is a business impact analysis that distinguishes critical from non-critical functions. A critical function is one whose implication for stakeholders or the extent of damage to the bank is considered unacceptable or disastrous. Moreover, any function that is dictated or required by law is automatically regarded as critical. What are perceived to be acceptable disruptions may be changed based on the cost of establishing and maintaining the necessary business or technical recovery solutions? Furthermore, impact analysis leads to the identification of each critical function’s recovery requirements. These include the timeframe in which the critical operation is restored after a disaster, the business and technical requirements essential to the recovery of each vital process. These days, banks have shorter business recovery time objectives compared to just a few years ago. In fact, recovery time for some institutions takes only a matter of hours, minutes, and sub-minutes, depending on the reason for the disruption. A business continuity plan must also address or take into account market-based and geographic interdependencies since there are now local, national, and global banking networks, as well as infrastructure service providers.

Critical components of a business continuity plan

According to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s (FINRA) FINRA Rule 4370, the elements comprising a member’s business continuity plan are flexible. They can be tailored to the scale and requirements of each member. However, all plans must address the following:

• Data backup and recovery (hard copy and electronic): This encompasses a clear identification of where primary books and records, as well as backup files (hard copy and electronic) of the same, are kept or located. Establishments should also be prepared to provide a detailed description of the data backup and recovery process during major business disruptions.
• All mission-critical systems: What is deemed to be mission-critical systems vary based on each member’s business. For banks, these would include online banking, access to customer accounts, and encryption.
• Financial and operational assessments: These assessments include a record of procedures to be undertaken, allowing for a bank to identify changes in its operational, financial, and credit risk exposures.
• Alternate communications between customers and the firm and between the firm and its employees: These encompass the provisions to be made to ensure an interrupted connection among everyone involved.
• Alternate physical location of employees: In the case of disruptions, there should be designated alternative sites for employees (this includes key personnel) in the resumption of business operations.
• Critical business constituent, bank, and counterparty impact: This covers the effect significant business disruption can have on a bank’s relationships with other banks, counterparties, and other stakeholders, and how it will address such impacts.
• Regulatory reporting: This should spell out the capability of a bank to ensure compliance with regulatory reporting requirements in the event of business disruption.
• Communications with regulators: This covers how a bank can communicate with FINRA during a significant disruption, and identifies designated business continuity plan contacts with FINRA who will assist in the communication.
• How the firm will assure customers’ prompt access to their funds and securities: Comprises details on how the bank will make funds and securities available to customers in the event of an extensive business disruption.

The business continuity planning process should be a continuously evolving step and bank-wide responsibility. It must be resilient and current to be capable of efficiently responding to changes in business operations and potential threats, and must completely address all audit recommendations and test results.

Business continuity planning is the process of planning for the potential issues that a company or business could face while maintaining operations. Creating and updating a business continuity plan is a cornerstone of successful businesses, and you should invest ample time and resources in ensuring that your plan is the best that it can be. Having a well-thought-through continuity plan in place ensures your business can recover seamlessly and be able to continue operations if there is an emergency.

Business Continuity Planning for 2023

As 2023 begins, it is important to start planning— and updating your business continuity plan is a huge part of that. Planning ahead ensures that you have a vision for your business moving forward and that you have the tools and resources in place to manage your growth and maximize success. Not sure how exactly to get started? Read ahead for practical steps and advice.

Perform a Business Impact Analysis

One of the first things you can do to aid your business continuity planning is to perform a business impact analysis. A business impact analysis (or BIA) explores the impact a widespread disruption would have on your business. Performing a business impact analysis is one of the best ways to start planning for the future. Doing so can help you find where there might be vulnerabilities in your operations and overall business model. It’s a great way to find and identify your business’s blind spots and prepare potential solutions. This can also assist with other essential business-related tasks, like budget planning and understanding hiring needs for the upcoming year. Planning ahead and performing a business impact analysis will save you lots of time and stress in any case.

Business Resilience

Part of planning ahead for 2023 should include solidifying your business’s overall resilience. Let’s face it— 2023 is a risky time to be operating a business. Think ahead about ways you can strengthen and solidify your business model. The world is more unpredictable than ever, and businesses need to be built to withstand it. Creating a business continuity and recovery plan will ensure your business is around for the long haul, allowing you to grow and invest in the future.

Disaster Recovery

It might sound obvious, but make sure you have a plan in place for disaster recovery as a part of your business continuity plan. Knowing and identifying issues is one thing, but dealing with them can be a different task. So, make sure you not only have a plan to identify risk, but also have a plan to manage and recover from it.

Risk Management

Now that you have invested in your business’s health and resiliency, you should start figuring out ways to mitigate risk. Investing in risk management plans should be a key part of planning for 2023. One of the biggest lessons that business leaders can take away from 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic is the need for proper risk management techniques. Don’t leave yourself unprepared like many businesses did— research and understand risk management in your field and implement best practices into your business continuity plan. Once you understand the value of risk management, you should identify and prevent these issues and tackle them head on. With that in mind, here are some common trends and potential risks projected for the year 2023.

Crime

Crime is one of the biggest trends you should be aware of when updating your business continuity plan this upcoming year. With issues like COVID-19, natural disasters, and high inflation, crime is on the rise. Consider common issues such as shoplifting, hackers, and other technology-related scams, and have plans and protocols in place to deal with these problems. Make sure that you also train both yourself and your employees to spot and prevent crime. Doing so will help prevent both financial losses, as well as ensure your business remains safe and trustworthy in the eyes of the public.

Working with Extreme Weather

With more occurrences of extreme weather on the rise it is smart planning to consider how extreme events could affect your business when updating your business continuity plan. Offering flexible work setting for your employees, such as work-from-home or a hybrid model, can help everyone maintain productivity during periods of extreme weather, such as the snowy winter months and extreme temperatures of late summer. It’s always best practice to have a protocol in place before the extreme weather hits, so research potential risks for your area and make a plan well ahead of time.

The Future of COVID-19

While many lockdowns and other early pandemic worries are now a thing of the past, there are still several highly contagious COVID-19 strains that are likely to stick around. Thus, it’s not unreasonable to assume that there will likely be times when your business may encounter issues due to COVID-19, including the possibility of multiple employees being out or even a temporary closure. Thus, it is vital that you have contingency plans built into your overall business continuity plan so everyone knows what to do in the event of COVID-19 affecting your workplace and business operations.

Continuing Work-from-Home (WFH) Trends

The word is in: Work from home is here to stay, as continual studies show that many people (and even employers) enjoy working from home while continuing to maintain similar, or even better, productivity levels as when they were working in the office. Rather than fighting work-from-home , future-minded employers are embracing the trend and strategizing ways to implement it into their overall business model and business continuity plans.

Dealing with Inflation

Inflation was a hot topic in 2022, and businesses and their employees can expect this trend to continue into 2023. Operating costs are likely to remain high due to inflation. Likewise, in response to inflation and the increasing costs of living, many workers are looking for jobs with higher wages. In addition, many states and local towns have passed minimum wage increases in response to the rising rates of inflation. Build inflation into your budget and have a plan in place to manage it going into the year 2023.

New Year, New Regulations

When the new year rolls around, there are almost always new laws and regulations that come into effect, be it on the state, local, federal, or even business level. It’s essential to research these new laws and regulations well ahead of time so that you can understand how they are going to affect your business going forward. Don’t wait until the new year has already arrived— doing so could mean fines or other legal penalizations if it turns out that you have broken labor or safety laws. If you have questions or any confusion or concerns about any new laws or regulations, you should talk to your business’s human resources department and legal team, to ensure you are prepared for new laws going forward. Doing so protects both your business and your employees, so don’t neglect this essential step. It’s part of your responsibility as someone who owns and operates a business.

Cybersecurity

Focusing on cybersecurity is a vital part of business planning in the modern era, and 2023 is no exception to this rule. Recent research  shows that cybersecurity events and business disruptions have been some of the most common types of business disasters in recent years. As technology grows and evolves, unfortunately, so do criminals. It will be well worth the effort to have a plan in place ahead of time, so your business’s safety is ensured online. Don’t wait until there is a data breach or extended outage to think about your cybersecurity. Your customers trust that you are being confidential and responsible with their information and jeopardizing that trust could result in a negative blow to your business reputation. Plan before it is too late.

Conclusion

A business continuity plan is a key component of your operations. It should be well thought through, carefully researched, and tested regularly. Creating a business continuity plan prevents a multitude of issues down the line for you and your business. Agility can help you create a customized plan for your business, so you can move forward through 2023 with confidence and maximize growth. Contact us today and learn how we can help you and your business succeed.

A BIA (business impact analysis) is essential in every organization. Often, companies don’t allocate enough time or resources to identify risk factors properly – and instead dive straight into creating a recovery strategy. Below will help you learn more about what a BIA involves and how to conduct one.

Defining Business Impact Analysis

The BIA is a framework used to analyze the consequences of disruptions and how they impact your business. The analysis considers potential loss scenarios, the timing of disturbances, and the results affecting crucial products and services. A risk assessment also examines the processes or activities supporting these disruptions. As a result of a BIA, organizations can plan recovery strategies alongside investments in prevention and mitigation strategies. For instance, 68.5% of organizations fell victim to ransomware attacks in 2021. If your organization were to, unfortunately, be part of a similar statistic in the future, performing a BIA now could be the foundation for creating a business continuity plan that could help you prevent or at least mitigate these cybersecurity threats.

The Benefits of a BIA

A BIA is your starting point for your BCP (business continuity plan). It acts as a checklist to help you prepare your annual activities and can be beneficial in the following ways:

• Recovery process: Your BCP should include the procedures or highest-impact assets for all the functions listed in your BIA. These prioritizations will provide transparency on where you can improve the BCP.
• Organizes recovery: In a recovery situation, it’s crucial to have a disaster plan that defines the highest prioritized tasks. A BIA accomplishes this for you. You can use it to rank each priority and procure an “order of recovery” list within your BCP.
• Prioritizes BCP testing:  Your BIA will prioritize the areas you’ll be testing in your BCP. For instance, you may need to test critical assets annually and high-priority assets every 18 months.
• Measures BCP testing effectiveness: A BIA provides sufficient measures to evaluate the BCP testing effectiveness. You can compare testing recovery times to the maximum tolerable downtime (MTD). If recovery time takes longer than the MTD, you can reevaluate and make improvements.
• Provides a rational approach to the backup rotation: Helps you to understand whether your backups achieve the desired results of your recovery point objective. Your IT staff can use this information to set backup schedules and rotations.

How to Conduct a Business Impact Analysis

A BIA ensures your organization can survive if a disaster or crisis occurs. Once you complete a BIA, you’ll learn the following:

• Critical business functions
• The impact of an interruption to those functions
• How long your business will thrive without performing the activities

Knowing how long your business will survive, you can define an MAO (maximum acceptable outage) period for every function. An MAO is the amount of time you have from when a disaster occurs to the time your business function must be operational to avoid financial loss. To learn how to conduct a BIA, follow the steps below.

1. Identify the Scope of the Business Impact Analysis

Small to medium-sized businesses can involve all business functions when conducting a BIA. After identifying the processes you’ll cover, you can meet with individuals you need to interview for the assessment. These individuals are people who do hands-on work and are informed of the processes and vulnerabilities. One person you should make sure to include is someone from your IT department. Even when someone knows how to use the software, they may not know how the back end functions. Once you’ve gathered all the critical business continuity information, you’ll create a timeline for conducting your BIA. Doing this will help you stay on track and complete the following two steps.

2. Schedule Business Impact Analysis Interviews

After you’ve identified the scope of departments and activities, the next step is to schedule a meeting with each department’s leadership team. Establish the value of conducting a BIA so they understand the purpose and importance of one. Your management team may not realize the investment into the BIA process. Therefore, knowing the value will allow your team to have all the information upfront.

3. Execute BIA Interviews

The purpose of these interviews is to determine the activities each department performs. According to Business2Community, scheduled interviews take approximately 2-2.5 hours to conduct. Furthermore, these activities should support the in-scope products and services. For each activity, gathering the steps necessary to complete the function, peak operation times, downtime, and dependencies required to perform one is essential. Consider documenting the following dependencies:

• Applications
• Facilities
• Third-party vendors
• Equipment
• Personnel
• Other interdependencies

For each dependency, you’ll need a description of their use, manual workarounds, and recovery time. Additionally, you should conduct a risk assessment by assigning the value for the likelihood of loss or the impact for every dependency. Once you’ve collected your data, you can multiply your numbers to provide a risk rating. You can value each rating from 1 to 10 during the process. Additionally, it helps to understand if any departments have experienced a disruption in the past. Knowing this information will merit stronger planning.

4. Document and Approve Each Department BIA Report

Upon completing each department meeting, you’ll have a documented report showing the results. Using business continuity software will increase the efficiency of the process. It can automate the analysis for you and the functionality for further updates. These reports should’ve captured all pertinent information and recommendations, such as recovery time objectives. Once you’ve drafted the report, you’ll distribute it to your staff and meet with participants to review it. During the meeting, you can make necessary changes and approve the narrative. Each department report will be essential to establish company-wide business continuity requirements for management to review and endorse.

5. Complete the BIA Summary

After each department completes its reports, you can finalize the BIA summary for management to review and approve. The purpose of this is to provide an overview of the key activities, requirements, and identified risks. Additionally, the report allows you to make risk treatment recommendations. For instance, some applications may need to be restored within 24 hours after a disaster – depending on the BIA you’ve conducted. After coordinating each department’s BIA conclusions, you can present your findings to leadership. During your presentation, focus on the following:

• Revisit the products and services identified in the risk assessment
• Verify the established recovery times
• Present the key risks and recommendations for addressing them

It’s important to prioritize these recommendations for leadership by focusing on accomplishing the correct level of resilience and the strategies to address the loss of resources.

Use Your BIA for Business Continuity Success

While a BIA often feels like you’re ticking boxes, it can provide a ton of value for your organization. Going through this exercise with your leadership team will help align everyone on what’s important to your business. Remember that it’s essential to make time for your business impact analysis. Taking action will provide you with better outcomes and help you stay on top of everything. Reach out to Agility today to get started.

Zac Amos is the Features Editor and a writer at ReHack, where he loves digging into business tech, cybersecurity, and anything else technology-related. You can find more of his work on Twitter or LinkedIn.

The business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) software market is currently flooded with varying degrees of continuity manager software that can all perform roughly the same tasks. As a business, this can be in your favor due to supply and demand paving the way for better prices and enhanced competitive features. Having a Business Continuity Plan is vital for your organization . However, with so many options, it can be overwhelming to sort through all of the available continuity software until you find one that suits your company. In this blog post, we’ll explain what we’ve found to be three of the most valuable features you should ask for in your business continuity manager software. To begin with, let’s discuss a continuous Business Impact Analysis (BIA).

What Is a Continuous BIA?

A BIA is necessary to establish parameters within your organization as to better estimate if there were an incident, what would be the best solution to get your company back on its feet, and how fast you would need to recover. A continuous BIA (offered in most business continuity software) can be updated regularly so you can ensure compliance with your industry’s regulations and maintain a well-developed plan to coincide with your business’s growth and expansion. It will retain the data from your last update, never resetting or deleting. The interaction that software provides can far outweigh that of a one-time-use template.

How Does a Continuous BIA Keep You Compliant?

No matter the industry, regulations exist to ensure quality, safety, and best practices. These guidelines are also associated with large penalties and fees for not meeting minimum compliance requirements. Every business, with only a few exceptions, is required to have an Emergency Action Plan (EAP) . A continuous BIA, unlike simple template forms, allows you to keep your BCDR plan up to date on compliance and government regulations. By having software that can track the completion of your plan, you are better able to see your progress towards being compliant. Also, because of the control given to the user to update and revise continuity goals, you’ll be able to easily incorporate new regulations as they arise.

How Does a Continuous BIA Accommodate Growth and Expansion?

Profit and customer growth are universal business goals driven by passion and ambition. Because of this, businesses are constantly evolving to the trends of their consumers’ markets to expand reach into new territories. These expansions could mean new software applications, upgraded tools and equipment, or even an increase in employees. To keep up with the movement of your business and maintain a well-developed and up-to-date BC/DR plan, having the capability to continually update your business’s BIA is crucial. When was the last time you updated your BIA?