WHEN you
start to put together your emergency management plan or your business
continuity management plan, one of the really critical steps is the business
impact analysis (BIA). The BIA determines, as a result of extensive questioning
of different parts of the business and sometimes actual testing, how the
identified risks will affect various business operations. This process
establishes business priorities. It also establishes the clear linkages and
contingencies between different operations of the business.
The
consequence analysis looks at the cost to the business if these risks are not
mitigated, but become full-blown. One of the elements of that consequence
analysis is placing a dollar value on the loss of functions, assets, inventory,
etc. Placing a dollar value on company assets enables us to understand their
true value and relative importance to the operation of the whole business.
It may be very difficult to assign a dollar value
to a particular set of data or piece of information. A better approach is to
create some categories and then apply a band of value to that category. For
instance, the base category would be information that is developed, handled and
stored by the company. This information may have value for the company but it
equally may already be in the public domain.
There is little sense placing any restriction on it
and it would not damage the company if it passed into the public domain. For
most companies, this band probably constitutes upwards of 60% of their
information holdings. Finally, do a cost/benefit analysis to determine
which IP protection measures make sense for your business.
- Ashley Mwanza
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