Environmental Health & Safety
Business Continuity
Glossary of Terms and Acronyms
Business Continuity:
Focuses on keeping the business operational during a disaster with the goal of limiting the amount of operational downtime.
Business Continuity Plan:
A document that outlines how a business will continue operating during an unplanned disruption in service; plans that define any and all risks that can affect the company’s operations and are developed pre-disaster with input from key stakeholders and personnel.
Business Impact Analysis (BIA):
A business impact analysis (BIA) is the process of determining the criticality of business activities and associated resource requirements to ensure operational resilience and continuity of operations during and after a business disruption.
Business Process Owner:
The subject matter expert who has oversight of a specific critical business process.
Disaster Recovery (DR):
Focuses on restoring data access and IT infrastructure after a disaster.
Downstream Dependencies:
A department or service that relies on something from your department (product or information) in order to be able to complete their work or process. Their work will be delayed if you don’t finish your work.
Plan Owner:
The person who has complete oversight of the Business Continuity Plan.
Recovery Point Objective (RPO):
The maximum acceptable data loss that a business process can stand to lose within individual applications before it is critically impacted.
Recovery Time Objective (RTO):
The amount of time after a disruption occurs in which a critical business process and its associated applications must be functional again in order to prevent financial and/or reputational damage to the organization.
Risk Assessment:
A proactive strategic assessment specific to the organization to determine natural, manmade and technical disasters that could result in a disruption.
Upstream Dependencies:
A department or service that you rely on to provide you with work so that you can complete your process. Your work will be delayed if they don’t provide their service or product.
Workaround:
AKA Downtime Procedure, continuing a process in a way that is not the normal way of performing that process.
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This page last updated 4/25/2025. Disclaimer.
