driftskritiske

Driftskritiske is a Norwegian term used to describe processes, systems, or components that are essential for maintaining normal operation within an organization. A driftskritisk element is one whose failure would cause significant disruption to services, safety risks, or substantial financial loss. The concept is applied across sectors to distinguish what must be available, reliable, and recoverable from what is not.

Organizations identify driftskritiske assets through risk assessments, business impact analyses, and safety studies. Such assets typically require high availability, redundancy, robust maintenance, continuous monitoring, and documented incident response and disaster recovery plans. Measures include redundant hardware, failover capabilities, regular backups, change-control processes, and tested contingency procedures. Compliance frameworks often set targets for uptime, recovery time objective (RTO), and recovery point objective (RPO).

Common domains include information technology systems, power and energy distribution, water treatment and supply, healthcare information systems, and critical manufacturing processes. In IT, driftskritiske systems may include data centers, SCADA and process-control networks, and core communications infrastructure. In healthcare, digital patient records and hospital information systems are frequently classified as driftskritiske due to their impact on patient safety and care continuity.

The term is context-dependent; what is driftskritisk in one organization may not be in another, and regulatory environments influence classification. It is closely related to the English term mission-critical and is a key concept in business continuity and resilience planning. See also mission-critical, business continuity, and resilience.