The FREE Cybersecurity Glossary by Thor Pedersen!

Business continuity: The ability of an organization to maintain essential functions during and after a disaster has occurred. This involves planning and preparation to ensure that an organization can continue to operate in case of serious incidents or disasters and can recover to an operational state within a reasonably short period. This concept extends beyond disaster recovery to include keeping all aspects of a business functioning amidst disruptive events.

Business Continuity Planning (BCP): The process of creating systems of prevention and recovery to deal with potential threats to an organization. BCP involves identifying critical business processes, determining acceptable downtime for each of these, and establishing protocols to restore function quickly and efficiently after a disruption. The end result of this process is a Business Continuity Plan - a comprehensive written document that guides an organization in responding to and recovering from disruptive incidents.

Business Control: Practices and mechanisms established by an organization to regulate business processes, manage risks, and achieve objectives. Controls span across various domains, including financial, operational, IT, and security, and are critical for maintaining order, ensuring compliance, and safeguarding assets against fraud and other threats.

Business dependency assessment: An analysis process that identifies the critical operational elements within an organization, such as people, information, and processes, which are necessary to deliver the key products and services. This process also identifies the interdependencies between these elements and the impact that a disruption to them might have. Understanding these dependencies and their potential impact is crucial in prioritizing recovery strategies and resources during an incident.

Business function: The specific activities and processes that are performed by a business to achieve its objectives. It is used to define the core operations of the business. For example, the production function of a manufacturing company or the sales function of a retail store.

Business goal: A business goal is an objective that an organization aims to achieve, such as increasing revenue, improving customer satisfaction, or enhancing security posture. In IT and cybersecurity, technology strategies are often aligned with these goals to support the overall vision and success of the business.