Risk Assessment and Treatment:

Risk Management

Risk management is the process of measuring, or assessing, risk and developing strategies to manage it. Strategies include transferring the risk to another party, avoiding the risk, reducing the negative effect of the risk, and accepting some or all of the consequences of a particular risk. Traditional risk management focuses on risks stemming from physical or legal causes (e.g. natural disasters or fires, accidents, death, and lawsuits).

Explanation

In ideal risk management, a prioritization process is followed whereby the risks with the greatest loss and the greatest probability of occurring are handled first, and risks with lower probability of occurrence and lower loss are handled later. In practice the process can be very difficult, and balancing between risks with a high probability of occurrence but lower loss vs. a risk with high loss but lower probability of occurrence can often be mishandled.

Intangible risk management identifies a new type of risk - a risk that has a 100% probability of occurring but is ignored by the organization due to a lack of identification ability. For example, knowledge risk occurs when deficient knowledge is applied. Relationship risk occurs when collaboration ineffectiveness occurs. Process-engagement risk occurs when operational ineffectiveness occurs. These risks directly reduce the productivity of knowledge workers, decrease cost effectiveness, profitability, service, quality, reputation, brand value, and earnings quality. Intangible risk management allows risk management to create immediate value from the identification and reduction of risks that reduce productivity.

Risk management also faces difficulties allocating resources. This is the idea of opportunity cost. Resources spent on risk management could have been spent on more profitable activities. Again, ideal risk management minimizes spending while maximizing the reduction of the negative effects of risks.

Steps in the risk management process

Establish the context

Establishing the context involves

1. Planning the remainder of the process.

2. Mapping out the following: the scope of the exercise, the identity and objectives of stakeholders, and the basis upon which risks will be evaluated.

3. Defining a framework for the process and an agenda for identification.

4. Developing an analysis of risk involved in the process.

Identification

After establishing the context, the next step in the process of managing risk is to identify potential risks. Risks are about events that, when triggered, cause problems. Hence, risk identification can start with the source of problems, or with the problem itself.

• Source analysis Risk sources may be internal or external to the system that is the target of risk management. Examples of risk sources are: stakeholders of a project, employees of a company or the weather over an airport.
• Problem analysis Risks are related to identified threats. For example: the threat of losing money, the threat of abuse of privacy information or the threat of accidents and casualties. The threats may exist with various entities, most important with shareholder, customers and legislative bodies such as the government.

When either source or problem is known, the events that a source may trigger or the events that can lead to a problem can be investigated. For example: stakeholders withdrawing during a project may endanger funding of the project; privacy information may be stolen by employees even within a closed network; lightning striking a Boeing 747 during takeoff may make all people onboard immediate casualties.

The chosen method of identifying risks may depend on culture, industry practice and compliance. The identification methods are formed by templates or the development of templates for identifying source, problem or event. Common risk identification methods are:

• Objectives-based risk identification Organizations and project teams have objectives. Any event that may endanger achieving an objective partly or completely is identified as risk. Objective-based risk identification is at the basis of COSO's Enterprise Risk Management - Integrated Framework
• Scenario-based risk identification In scenario analysis different scenarios are created. The scenarios may be the alternative ways to achieve an objective, or an analysis of the interaction of forces in, for example, a market or battle. Any event that triggers an undesired scenario alternative is identified as risk - see Futures Studies for methodology used by Futurists.
• Taxonomy-based risk identification The taxonomy in taxonomy-based risk identification is a breakdown of possible risk sources. Based on the taxonomy and knowledge of best practices, a questionnaire is compiled. The answers to the questions reveal risks. Taxonomy-based risk identification in software industry can be found in CMU/SEI-93-TR-6.
• Common-risk Checking In several industries lists with known risks are available. Each risk in the list can be checked for application to a particular situation. An example of known risks in the software industry is the Common Vulnerability and Exposures list found at http://cve.mitre.org.

Assessment

Once risks have been identified, they must then be assessed as to their potential severity of loss and to the probability of occurrence. These quantities can be either simple to measure, in the case of the value of a lost building, or impossible to know for sure in the case of the probability of an unlikely event occurring. Therefore, in the assessment process it is critical to make the best educated guesses possible in order to properly prioritize the implementation of the risk management plan.

Risk Scoring System

A successful risk-based IT audit program can be based on an effective scoring system. In establishing a scoring system, the board of directors and management should ensure the system is understandable, considers all relevant risk factors, and, to the extent possible, avoids subjectivity.

Major risk factors commonly used in scoring systems include the following:

• The adequacy of internal controls
• The nature of transactions (for example, the number and dollar volumes and the complexity)
• The age of the system or application
• The nature of the operating environment (for example, changes in volume, degree of system and reporting centralization, sensitivity of resident or processed data, the impact on critical business processes, potential financial impact, planned conversions, and economic and regulatory environment)
• The physical and logical security of information, equipment, and premises
• The adequacy of operating management oversight and monitoring
• Previous regulatory and audit results and management’s responsiveness in addressing issues
• Human resources, including the experience of management and staff, turnover, technical competence, management’s succession plan, and the degree of delegation
• Senior management oversight
  

Auditors should develop written guidelines on the use of risk assessment tools and risk factors and review these guidelines with the audit committee or the board of directors. The sophistication and formality of guidelines will vary for individual institutions depending on their size, complexity, scope of activities, geographic diversity, and various technologies used. The institution can rely on standard industry practice or on its own experiences to define risk scoring. Auditors should use the guidelines to grade or assess major risk areas and to define the range of scores or assessments (e.g., groupings such as low, medium, and high risk or a numerical sequence such as 1 through 5).

The written risk assessment guidelines should specify the following elements:

• A maximum length for audit cycles based on the risk scores. (For example, some institutions set audit cycles at 12 months or less for high-risk areas, 24 months or less for medium-risk areas, and up to 36 months for low-risk areas. Audit cycles should not be open-ended.);
• The timing of risk assessments for each department or activity. (Normally risks are assessed annually, but more frequent assessments may be needed if the institution experiences rapid growth or significant change in operation or activities.);
• Documentation requirements to support scoring decisions; and
• Guidelines for overriding risk assessments in special cases and the circumstances under which they can be overridden. (For example, the guidelines should define who can override assessments, and how the override is approved, reported and documented.)
  

Numerous industry groups offer resources where institutions can obtain matrices, models, or additional information on risk assessments. Among these groups are: ISACA, American Bankers Association (ABA), American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), and IIA. Day-to-day management of the risk-based audit program rests with the internal audit manager, who monitors the audit scope and risk assessments to ensure that audit coverage remains adequate. The internal audit manager also prepares reports showing the risk rating, planned scope, and audit cycle for each area. The audit manager should confirm the risk assessment system’s reliability at least annually or whenever significant changes occur within a department or function. Operating department managers and auditors should work together in evaluating the risk in all departments and functions by reviewing risk assessments to determine their reasonableness.

Auditors should periodically review the results of internal control processes and analyze financial or operational data for any impact on a risk assessment or scoring. Accordingly, operating management should be required to keep auditors up to date on all major changes in departments or functions, such as the introduction of a new product, implementation of a new system, application conversions, or significant changes in organization or staff.

The fundamental difficulty in risk assessment is determining the rate of occurrence since statistical information is not available on all kinds of past incidents. Furthermore, evaluating the severity of the consequences (impact) is often quite difficult for immaterial assets. Asset valuation is another question that needs to be addressed. Thus, best educated opinions and available statistics are the primary sources of information. Nevertheless, risk assessment should produce such information for the management of the organization that the primary risks are easy to understand and that the risk management decisions may be prioritized. Thus, there have been several theories and attempts to quantify risks.

HORSE FACTS: Numerous different risk formulae exist, but perhaps the most widely accepted formula for risk quantification is: (Rate of occurrence multiplied by the impact of the event equals risk)

Later research has shown that the financial benefits of risk management are less dependent on the formula used but are more dependent on the frequency and how risk assessment is performed.

In business it is imperative to be able to present the findings of risk assessments in financial terms. Robert Courtney Jr. (IBM, 1970) proposed a formula for presenting risks in financial terms. The Courtney formula was accepted as the official risk analysis method for the US governmental agencies. The formula proposes calculation of ALE (annualised loss expectancy) and compares the expected loss value to the security control implementation costs (cost-benefit analysis).

Potential risk treatments

Once risks have been identified and assessed, all techniques to manage the risk fall into one or more of these four major categories: (Dorfman, 1997) (remember as 4 T's)

• Tolerate (aka retention)
• Treat (aka mitigation)
• Terminate (aka elimination)
• Transfer (aka buying insurance)

Ideal use of these strategies may not be possible. Some of them may involve trade-offs that are not acceptable to the organization or person making the risk management decisions.

Risk avoidance

Includes not performing an activity that could carry risk. An example would be not buying a property or business in order to not take on the liability that comes with it. Another would be not flying in order to not take the risk that the airplane were to be hijacked. Avoidance may seem the answer to all risks, but avoiding risks also means losing out on the potential gain that accepting (retaining) the risk may have allowed. Not entering a business to avoid the risk of loss also avoids the possibility of earning profits.

Risk reduction

Involves methods that reduce the severity of the loss. Examples include sprinklers designed to put out a fire to reduce the risk of loss by fire. This method may cause a greater loss by water damage and therefore may not be suitable. Halon fire suppression systems may mitigate that risk, but the cost may be prohibitive as a strategy.

Modern software development methodologies reduce risk by developing and delivering software incrementally. Early methodologies suffered from the fact that they only delivered software in the final phase of development; any problems encountered in earlier phases meant costly rework and often jeopardized the whole project. By developing in iterations, software projects can limit effort wasted to a single iteration.

Risk retention

Involves accepting the loss when it occurs. True self insurance falls in this category. Risk retention is a viable strategy for small risks where the cost of insuring against the risk would be greater over time than the total losses sustained.

All risks that are not avoided or transferred are retained by default.

This includes risks that are so large or catastrophic that they either cannot be insured against or the premiums would be infeasible. War is an example since most property and risks are not insured against war, so the loss attributed by war is retained by the insured. Also any amounts of potential loss (risk) over the amount insured is retained risk. This may also be acceptable if the chance of a very large loss is small or if the cost to insure for greater coverage amounts is so great it would hinder the goals of the organization too much.

Risk transfer

Means causing another party to accept the risk, typically by contract or by hedging. Insurance is one type of risk transfer that uses contracts. Other times it may involve contract language that transfers a risk to another party without the payment of an insurance premium. Liability among construction or other contractors is very often transferred this way. On the other hand, taking offsetting positions in derivatives is typically how firms use hedging to financially manage risk.

Some ways of managing risk fall into multiple categories. Risk retention pools are technically retaining the risk for the group, but spreading it over the whole group involves transfer among individual members of the group. This is different from traditional insurance, in that no premium is exchanged between members of the group up front, but instead losses are assessed to all members of the group.

Create the plan

Decide on the combination of methods to be used for each risk. Each risk management decision should be recorded and approved by the appropriate level of management. For example, a risk concerning the image of the organization should have top management decision behind it whereas IT management would have the authority to decide on computer virus risks.

The risk management plan should propose applicable and effective security controls for managing the risks. For example, an observed high risk of computer viruses could be mitigated by acquiring and implementing anti virus software. A good risk management plan should contain a schedule for control implementation and responsible persons for those actions. The risk management concept is old but is still not very effectively measured

Implementation

Follow all of the planned methods for mitigating the effect of the risks. Purchase insurance policies for the risks that have been decided to be transferred to an insurer, avoid all risks that can be avoided without sacrificing the entity's goals, reduce others, and retain the rest.

Review and evaluation of the plan

Initial risk management plans will never be perfect. Practice, experience, and actual loss results will necessitate changes in the plan and contribute information to allow possible different decisions to be made in dealing with the risks being faced.

Risk analysis results and management plans should be updated periodically. There are two primary reasons for this:

1. to evaluate whether the previously selected security controls are still applicable and effective, and
2. to evaluate the possible risk level changes in the business environment. For example, information risks are a good example of rapidly changing business environment.

Limitations

If risks are improperly assessed and prioritized, time can be wasted in dealing with risk of losses that are not likely to occur. Spending too much time assessing and managing unlikely risks can divert resources that could be used more profitably. Unlikely events do occur but if the risk is unlikely enough to occur it may be better to simply retain the risk and deal with the result if the loss does in fact occur.

Prioritizing too highly the risk management processes could keep an organization from ever completing a project or even getting started. This is especially true if other work is suspended until the risk management process is considered complete.

It is also important to keep in mind the distinction between risk and uncertainty. Risk can be measured by impacts x probability.

Areas of risk management

As applied to corporate finance, risk management is a technique for measuring, monitoring and controlling the financial or operational risk on a firm's balance sheet. See value at risk.

The Basel II framework breaks risks into market risk (price risk), credit risk and operational risk and also specifies methods for calculating capital requirements for each of these components.

Enterprise risk management

In enterprise risk management, a risk is defined as a possible event or circumstance that can have negative influences on the Enterprise in question. Its impact can be on the very existence, the resources (human and capital), the products and services, or the customers of the enterprise, as well as external impacts on society, markets, or the environment.

In addition, every probable risk can have a pre-formulated plan to deal with its possible consequences (to ensure contingency if the risk becomes a liability).

From the information above and the average cost per employee over time, or cost accrual ratio, a project manager can estimate

• the cost associated with the risk if it arises, estimated by multiplying employee costs per unit time by the estimated time lost (cost impact, C where C = cost accrual ratio * S).
• the probable increase in time associated with a risk (schedule variance due to risk, Rs where Rs = P * S):
  • Sorting on this value puts the highest risks to the schedule first. This is intended to cause the greatest risks to the project to be attempted first so that risk is minimized as quickly as possible.
  • This is slightly misleading as schedule variances with a large P and small S and vice versa are not equivalent. (The risk of the RMS Titanic sinking vs. the passengers' meals being served at slightly the wrong time).
• the probable increase in cost associated with a risk (cost variance due to risk, Rc where Rc = P*C = P*CAR*S = P*S*CAR)
  • sorting on this value puts the highest risks to the budget first.
  • see concerns about schedule variance as this is a function of it, as illustrated in the equation above.

Risk in a project or process can be due either to Special Cause Variation or Common Cause Variation and requires appropriate treatment. That is to re-iterate the concern about extremal cases not being equivalent in the list immediately above.

Risk management activities

Risk management includes the following activities:

• Planning how risk management will be held in the particular project. Plan should include risk management tasks, responsibilities, activities and budget.
• Assigning a risk officer - a team member other than a project manager who is responsible for foreseeing potential project problems. Typical characteristic of risk officer is a healthy skepticism.
• Maintaining live project risk database. Each risk should have the following attributes: opening date, title, short description, probability and importance. Optionally a risk may have an assigned person responsible for its resolution and a date by which the risk must be resolved.
• Creating anonymous risk reporting channel. Each team member should have possibility to report risk that he foresees in the project.
• Preparing mitigation plans for risks that are chosen to be mitigated. The purpose of the mitigation plan is to describe how this particular risk will be handled – what, when, by who and how will be done to avoid it or minimize consequences if it becomes a liability.
• Summarizing planned and faced risks, effectiveness of mitigation activities and effort spend for the risk management.

Risk management and business continuity

Risk management is simply a practice of systematically selecting cost effective approaches for minimising the effect of threat realization to the organization. All risks can never be fully avoided or mitigated simply because of financial and practical limitations. Therefore all organizations have to accept some level of residual risks.

Whereas risk management tends to be pre-emptive, business continuity planning (BCP) was invented to deal with the consequences of realised residual risks. The necessity to have BCP in place arises because even very unlikely events will occur if given enough time. Risk management and BCP are often mistakenly seen as rivals or overlapping practices. In fact these processes are so tightly tied together that such separation seems artificial. For example, the risk management process creates important inputs for the BCP (assets, impact assessments, cost estimates etc). Risk management also proposes applicable controls for the observed risks. Therefore, risk management covers several areas that are vital for the BCP process. However, the BCP process goes beyond risk management's pre-emptive approach and moves on from the assumption that the disaster will realise at some point.

It is vital to identify from a prioritized perspective what components of your business are most important for the continuation of your business. How much down time can a business sustain before permanent damage to reputation or revenue puts a business into bankruptcy? A Disaster Recovery Requirements Analysis should be performed to answer these mission critical questions before a catastrophe strikes. Prudent proactive planning will always be a good business decision.

--Mdpeters 08:42, 15 February 2007 (EST)

Further reading

• Risk Management Magazine
• The RMA Journal®
• U.S. EPA's General Risk Management Program Guidance (April 2004)

Associations

• Association of Insurance and Risk Managers (AIRMIC)
• The Risk and Insurance Management Society, Inc. (RIMS)
• European Federation of Risk Management Associations (FERMA)
• Latin American Association of Risk and Insurance Managers(ALARYS)
• International Federation of Risk and Insurance Management Associations (IFRIMA)
• International Risk Governance Council
• The Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP)
• The Professional Risk Managers' International Association (PRMIA)
• The American Society for Healthcare Risk Management (ASHRM)
• The Institute of Risk Management (IRM)
• University Risk Management & Insurance Association (URMIA)
• The Institute of Risk Management South Africa (IRMSA)
• Audit Director Roundtable (ADR) covering risk in internal auditing
• The Risk Management Association (RMA)