The European NIS2 Directive and the upcoming Czech Cybersecurity Act bring entirely new obligations for companies in critical infrastructure, digital services and other key sectors. The obligation to prepare a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is one of the most important - and also the most underestimated. Yet it is the BIA that can make the difference in a company's survival in a crisis situation.
The law newly introduces requirements for risk management, business continuity assurance, a disaster recovery plan, or incident handling capability testing. In other words, companies must be able to not only minimize the risk of a cyber attack, but recover quickly if an attack does occur. This is where Business Impact Analysis plays a key role.
Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is not just an analytical spreadsheet. It's a practical compass that shows:
A well-crafted BIA will help you determine:
Without these parameters, you cannot effectively manage risk. No company can do without risk management today, and certainly not under NIS2 regulation.
New requirements are often seen as just a bureaucratic burden. But a well set up Business Impact Analysis is a worthwhile investment. It will show you weak spots, help you make the right IT investments, set a realistic recovery plan, and prepare for crisis situations before they happen.
The law may force you to do it, but you should want to get something out of it
Don't wait for the new law to land on your desk with a warning about fines. Get on with it now - not for the sake of sections, but for the sake of your own business. The BIA can help you:
Prepare businesses for new obligations under NIS2 / the new Cybersecurity Act or DORA. We can help you set up processes, assess risks and create a Business Impact Analysis that makes sense - not just regulatory, but business sense too.
Want to know more? Contact us. We'd be happy to walk you through what a BIA means for your business.
Autor: Tomáš Kubíček, Libor Šrám
NIS2 is not just about technology, sometimes it is literally about survival
The law newly introduces requirements for risk management, business continuity assurance, a disaster recovery plan, or incident handling capability testing. In other words, companies must be able to not only minimize the risk of a cyber attack, but recover quickly if an attack does occur. This is where Business Impact Analysis plays a key role.
What is Business Impact Analysis and why should you care?
Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is not just an analytical spreadsheet. It's a practical compass that shows:
- which processes are really key to your business
- how much downtime you can still afford
- what the impact would be on finances, reputation and operations
A well-crafted BIA will help you determine:
- RTO - Recovery Time Objective (how quickly you need to recover the process)
- RPO - Recovery Point Objective (how much data you can lose at most)
Without these parameters, you cannot effectively manage risk. No company can do without risk management today, and certainly not under NIS2 regulation.
What scenarios could occur in practice?
- Imagine that there is an attack on a bank that disables internet banking. Customers cannot access their accounts, make payments or manage their finances. With every hour of downtime, the likelihood that clients will start to withdraw money en masse increases, trust in the bank's stability decreases, and the problem quickly becomes newsworthy. Without a pre-defined RTO and RPO, the IT team cannot effectively restore operations and business losses can run into the tens of millions of kroner per day.
- If a hospital suffers a cyber attack that shuts down its information system, doctors lose access to medical records, lab results and patient medications. The threat to patients' lives is immediate. BIA helps the hospital determine which processes and systems (e.g., access to EKG records, medication, emergency admissions) need to be restored within minutes and which can wait. Without this analysis, decisions would be made blindly - with fatal consequences.
- If there is a technical glitch in a government office that disables eGovernment services - people can't submit applications, businesses can't receive receipts, officials can't see files. The BIA will show that, for example, tax or benefit payment systems need to be available almost around the clock, while other processes (e.g. administrative filing) can handle a longer outage. Without this knowledge, there is a risk of loss of citizen confidence and possible collapse of government services.
- A logistics company falls victim to a ransomware attack on Friday night that encrypts the entire dispatch and GPS systems of vehicles. Thousands of shipments have no itinerary, warehousemen don't know what to ship, customers call and no one can answer. BIA will show that even a 3-4 hour outage at this time can mean thousands of deliveries delayed, penalties from trading partners and reputational damage. A company that knows its critical processes has a plan in place and can restore at least partial operations in a timely manner.
A BIA isn't just a piece of paper for the regulator - it's insurance for your business
New requirements are often seen as just a bureaucratic burden. But a well set up Business Impact Analysis is a worthwhile investment. It will show you weak spots, help you make the right IT investments, set a realistic recovery plan, and prepare for crisis situations before they happen.The law may force you to do it, but you should want to get something out of it
Don't wait for the new law to land on your desk with a warning about fines. Get on with it now - not for the sake of sections, but for the sake of your own business. The BIA can help you:
- Protect the most valuable asset you have in your business
- Speed up recovery from an outage
- convince customers, partners and insurers that you're in control
Prepare businesses for new obligations under NIS2 / the new Cybersecurity Act or DORA. We can help you set up processes, assess risks and create a Business Impact Analysis that makes sense - not just regulatory, but business sense too.
Want to know more? Contact us. We'd be happy to walk you through what a BIA means for your business.
Autor: Tomáš Kubíček, Libor Šrám