Glossary term
BCM
Also: Business Continuity Management
Discipline for maintaining critical business processes during disruptions. Standards: ISO 22301, BSI Standard 200-4. Mandatory under BAIT/VAIT and DORA Art. 11 in the financial sector.
BCM includes Business Impact Analysis (BIA), risk assessment, continuity strategies, BCM plans, tests, training, continual improvement. Auditable via ISO 22301 certification or BSI 200-4 audit.
Metrics: Recovery Time Objective (RTO, max acceptable downtime) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO, max acceptable data loss). Critical processes typically have RTO < 4h and RPO < 1h.
In practice
DORA Art. 11 requires a business continuity policy with backup strategy, recovery plans and regular testing. NIS2 Art. 21 (c) explicitly requires business continuity and crisis management.
Related terms
RTO / RPO
Two core BCM metrics. RTO = maximum downtime by which a process must be back online. RPO = maximum tolerable data loss measured in time.
DORA
EU regulation on digital operational resilience in the financial sector. Directly applicable since 17 January 2025. Five pillars: ICT risk management, incident management, resilience testing including TLPT, third-party governance, information sharing.
NIS2
EU directive on network and information security. Replaces NIS1, widens scope to around 30,000 German companies in 18 sectors, introduces personal management body liability, sets ten minimum cybersecurity measures under Article 21.
BAIT
BaFin circular that concretises IT requirements for credit institutions. Specifies MaRisk AT 7.2 for IT strategy, information security, user permissions, project management, application development, and IT outsourcing.
BSI C5
Cloud audit catalogue of the German BSI that defines minimum security baseline and transparency duties. Evidenced via an ISAE 3000 C5 attestation. De facto standard for cloud procurement in the German market.
AI Act Conformity Assessment
Procedure to demonstrate that a high-risk AI system complies with the EU AI Act before being placed on the market or put into service. Mandatory for all Annex III high-risk systems from 2 December 2027 (postponed from the original 2 August 2026 by the Digital Omnibus, Regulation (EU) 2026/1744).
AI Act Risk Categories
Four-tier classification under the EU AI Act: prohibited (Art. 5), high-risk (Annex I/III), limited risk (Art. 50 transparency), minimal risk. Classification is the first duty; it must be documented and defensible.
Audit-ready decision
A decision whose record is structured, evidence-backed and stakeholder-signed to a level that a third-party auditor, a supervisor or a board reviewer can reconstruct the reasoning without interviewing the original team.