Skip to main content

Risk assessment

Risk assessment is the identification of hazards that could negatively impact an organization's ability to conduct business. These assessments help identify these inherent business risks and provide measures, processes and controls to reduce the impact of these risks to business operations.

Companies can use a risk assessment framework (RAF) to prioritize and share the details of the assessment, including any risks to their information technology (IT) infrastructure. The RAF helps an organization identify potential hazards and any business assets put at risk by these hazards, as well as potential fallout if these risks come to fruition.

In large enterprises, the risk assessment process is usually conducted by the Chief Risk Officer (CRO) or a Chief Risk Manager.

Risk assessment steps

How a risk assessment is conducted varies widely depending on the risks unique to the type of business, the industry that business is in and the compliance rules applied to that given business or industry. However, there are five general steps that companies can follow regardless of their business type or industry.

Step 1: Identify the hazards. The first step in a risk assessment is to identify any potential hazards that, if they were to occur, would negatively influence the organization's ability to conduct business. Potential hazards that could be considered or identified during risk assessment include natural disasters, utility outages, cyberattacks and power failure.

Step 2: Determine what, or who, could be harmed. After the hazards are identified, the next step is to determine which business assets would be negatively influenced if the risk came to fruition. Business assets deemed at risk to these hazards can include critical infrastructure, IT systems, business operations, company reputation and even employee safety.

Step 3: Evaluate the risks and develop control measures. A risk analysis can help identify how hazards will impact business assets and the measures that can be put into place to minimize or eliminate the effect of these hazards on business assets. Potential hazards include property damage, business interruption, financial loss and legal penalties.

Step 4: Record the findings. The risk assessment findings should be recorded by the company and filed as easily accessible, official documents. The records should include details on potential hazards, their associated risks and plans to prevent the hazards.

Step 5: Review and update the risk assessment regularly. Potential hazards, risks and their resulting controls can change rapidly in a modern business environment. It is important for companies to update their risk assessments regularly to adapt to these changes.

Risk assessment tools, such as risk assessment templates, are available for different industries. They might prove useful to companies developing their first risk assessments or updating older assessments.

How to use a risk assessment matrix

A risk assessment matrix, as shown in the example above, is drawn as a grid with one axis labeled "likelihood" and the other axis labeled "consequence." Each axis progresses from "low" to "high."  Each event is plotted on one line in terms of its low to high likelihood. On the other line, the event is plotted on one line in terms of its low to high consequence. Where they meet determines the plot point on the matrix.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black swan

A  black swan event  is an incident that occurs randomly and unexpectedly and has wide-spread ramifications. The event is usually followed with reflection and a flawed rationalization that it was inevitable. The phrase illustrates the frailty of inductive reasoning and the danger of making sweeping generalizations from limited observations. The term came from the idea that if a man saw a thousand swans and they were all white, he might logically conclude that all swans are white. The flaw in his logic is that even when the premises are true, the conclusion can still be false. In other words, just because the man has never seen a black swan, it does not mean they do not exist. As Dutch explorers discovered in 1697, black swans are simply outliers -- rare birds, unknown to Europeans until Willem de Vlamingh and his crew visited Australia. Statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb uses the phrase black swan as a metaphor for how humans deal with unpredictable events in his 2007...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)

A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a computer chip that performs rapid mathematical calculations, primarily for the purpose of rendering images. A GPU may be found integrated with a central processing unit (CPU) on the same circuit, on a graphics card or in the motherboard of a personal computer or server. In the early days of computing, the CPU performed these calculations. As more graphics-intensive applications such as AutoCAD were developed; however, their demands put strain on the CPU and degraded performance. GPUs came about as a way to offload those tasks from CPUs, freeing up their processing power. NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and ARM are some of the major players in the GPU market. GPU vs. CPU A graphics processing unit is able to render images more quickly than a central processing unit because of its parallel processing architecture, which allows it to perform multiple calculations at the same time. A single CPU does not have this capability, although multi...
Post a Comment
Read more

6G (sixth-generation wireless)

6G (sixth-generation wireless) is the successor to 5G cellular technology. 6G networks will be able to use higher frequencies than 5G networks and provide substantially higher capacity and much lower latency. One of the goals of the 6G Internet will be to support one micro-second latency communications, representing 1,000 times faster -- or 1/1000th the latency -- than one millisecond throughput. The 6G technology market is expected to facilitate large improvements in the areas of imaging, presence technology and location awareness. Working in conjunction with AI, the computational infrastructure of 6G will be able to autonomously determine the best location for computing to occur; this includes decisions about data storage, processing and sharing.  Advantages of 6G over 5G 6G is expected to support 1 terabyte per second (Tbps) speeds. This level of capacity and latency will be unprecedented and wi...
Post a Comment
Read more