In this week’s bulletin, Charlie discusses the future of AI within the business continuity industry, with a particular focus on Business Impact Analysis and how it has the potential to revolutionise business continuity processes.
Over the last couple of weeks, whenever I’ve been in the car, I’ve been listening to the BBC Sounds podcast The Coming Storm. It delves into various conspiracy theories in the United States, exploring their origins, evolution, and impact on society. The final episode of Series Two focuses on AI and the conspiracy theories surrounding it. It mentions the Extropians, a group that envisioned a future of augmented human bodies, nanotechnology, cryptocurrencies, and artificial intelligence, and then worked to bring this vision to life.
This got me thinking. Last year, I wrote a bulletin on AI, but it was more focused on how I currently use AI, rather than how I imagine the future. So, this week, I thought I’d share my thoughts on how AI could shape the future of business continuity.
The first place to start is the BIA (Business Impact Analysis). I often feel the BIA is iconic within business continuity because it’s one of the few tools developed specifically for our industry. It has three main purposes: identifying and prioritising activities or processes, determining the resources and dependencies needed to deliver time-critical services, and assessing the level of resources required to maintain those services at the agreed levels.
The challenge with the current BIA process is that it takes time and effort to develop, not everyone sees the necessity of it, and it lacks dynamism. The priorities of an organisation can change depending on the time of day, the year, or external events. Similarly, the resources needed to respond to an incident can vary based on the situation. I foresee a future where AI could create a BIA on the day of an incident. AI would understand your organisation’s workings, resources, and priorities, and based on the specifics of the incident, it could generate a tailored BIA for recovery planning.
To develop a model that could generate a BIA on the day of an incident, AI could continuously monitor an organisation’s network – understanding which departments use which applications, procurement data, HR records, and asset usage – to create a real-time model of the business. It could identify the patterns of activity throughout the organisation and assess the impact at different times. The data would be much more detailed than what could be gathered in a brief departmental interview, and it could also provide insights for improving efficiency and reducing waste.
In this future, we might not even need pre-written plans. AI could generate incident-specific requirements on the day. Currently, plans have checklists for understanding an incident, but AI could produce a more tailored list of questions based on the details provided in real-time. It could even listen in on calls, automatically log conversations, evaluate the incident against the criteria for plan invocation, and make recommendations.
Rather than relying on a predetermined incident response team, AI could dynamically assemble the most suitable team based on their skills, knowledge, temperament, and the nature of the incident. AI could also scan media and social media to gauge external sentiment, and produce appropriate responses. Based on its understanding of the organisation, AI could develop a recovery plan, starting with the identified priorities and the necessary resources.
AI could also revolutionise training and exercises. Customised training programmes could be developed instantly, with competencies measured through participation in exercises. AI could write scenarios, objectives, and assessment criteria, and summarise exercise events to help with post-exercise reports.
Risk assessment could be partially automated, with AI taking into account industry, geography, organisation size, and past events. While tailored discussions would still be necessary to address specific risks, AI could streamline much of the groundwork.
Some of this future isn’t far off. We may sometime soon see AI-generated dynamic BIAs and tailored plan prompts, though we’ll still need paper copies in case of AI or IT failures. Reflecting on The Coming Storm, my vision of AI’s future role in business continuity may seem tame compared to some of the more radical ideas out there, but it’s a start. Hopefully it’s a vision that could spark further development and imagination as we continue exploring these possibilities.
