Power Blackout Risks

business impact analysis (bia)
is the cornerstone of BCP, as it forms the basis of the further recovery strategy. In order to determine the relevant 
business processes at risk of failure and describe them in detail in terms of their importance and impact, questions 
are put to the senior management. Based on the information received, an analysis is carried out to ascertain how 
long the company can continue to operate without its existence being jeopardised if areas identified as being at 
risk fail. Here, any interdependency and contingency losses arising from the power outage must also be taken 
into account. 
The business impact analysis results in statements about: 
•
Loss potentials 
•
Restart times for critical business functions, and also 
•
Emergency staff, infrastructure and contingency workplaces 
disaster recovery plans 
lay down, step by step, the procedure to be followed – from the alerting routine to resumption of the business 
function. 
The result should be a group-wide business continuity guideline that defines the key data of the BCP and which 
the entire Board of Management approves as a binding requirement. The BC guideline will include the business 
continuity organisation, the business continuity master plan and all the measures for maintaining, exercising, 
auditing and developing the BCP. 

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testing and developing the bcp
The best business continuity planning can fail in an emergency if it is not constantly adapted to current 
conditions and regularly practised. Tests, training, audits and simulations are the supreme discipline of business 
continuity planning.
Internal and external audits are also used to ensure the quality of BCP. To this end, as part of its responsibilities, 
the BC management checks whether the rules agreed beforehand are complied with in the individual business 
units and whether the BC organisation and BC set-up tally with the planning in everyday life. 
As a result of the increased reduction of redundancies and the outsourcing outlined before, the BCM Manager 
has to include power supply as one of the business critical processes into the BCP.
This could be addressed in various ways:
•
Ensure, that for business critical processes multiple sources are available
•
Ensure, that the impact of a power outage is reduced by investing in technical backup units (e.g. emergency 
power supply)
•
Ensure, that cost benefit analysis relocating or outsourcing business critical processes take the additional risk 
of power outages into account, which might lead to the decision to locate the process in another country than 
originally planned.
5.3. Risk transfer solutions