Risk Management

What is the Risk?

All business activities carry a degree of risk. The simplest and possibly best definition of risk is:

“The possibility of loss, injury, disadvantage or destruction.”

Apply this definition to the issues of business management and you have the starting point for successful risk management.

What is Risk Management?

Risk management is the sum of all proactive management-directed activities within a business that are intended to acceptably accommodate the possibility of failures in elements of the business.
"Acceptably" is as judged by the business in the final analysis, but from an organization's perspective a failure is anything accomplished in less than a professional manner and/or with a less-than-adequate result.
Risk management thus involves identifying those factors that present a risk to the business and then adopting strategies to avoid mitigate or otherwise accommodate the issues identified according to the business’s priorities.

How does this relate to Information Security?

A core element of good information security is the management of the risks surrounding that information.  By effectively managing the risks to its information assets a business can ensure the three key elements of Information Security: Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability.