> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://intuitem.gitbook.io/ciso-assistant/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://intuitem.gitbook.io/ciso-assistant/concepts/assets-and-resilience/business-impact-analyses.md).

# Business impact analyses

A **business impact analysis** (BIA) measures the operational, financial, and reputational consequences of disrupting specific assets or business processes — the input to any serious resilience plan.

Where a risk assessment asks "what could go wrong?", a BIA asks "if it does, how bad is it, and how quickly does it become unacceptable?".

## Mental model

A BIA is an assessment scoped to a perimeter. For each asset in scope, the platform captures:

* **Asset assessment** — the impact of disruption along one or more dimensions (financial, operational, regulatory, reputational).
* **Escalation thresholds** — the durations after which disruption becomes severe, critical, or unacceptable — often expressed as RTO (Recovery Time Objective) levels.

The output is a prioritised view of which assets your continuity plan must protect first.

## How it ties into the rest of the platform

* BIAs read from the **asset inventory** — assets are first-class objects, not BIA-private records.
* The criticality output can drive **risk scenario prioritisation** for the same assets.
* For organisations subject to DORA, BIA results feed into incident-reporting workflows.

## Related

* [Assets](/ciso-assistant/concepts/assets-and-resilience/assets.md)
* [Risk assessments](/ciso-assistant/concepts/risk/risk-assessments.md)
* [Vocabulary → Business impact analysis](/ciso-assistant/introduction/vocabulary.md)


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