IT Risks

“Risk management” is a common phrase when managing information, used by everyone from the chief information security officer to the programmer to explain how we identify, assess, and prioritize risks. It thus reflects how we manage uncertainty as we attempt to control the probability and effect of unfortunate events. Depending on your IT-related experience and area of work, your view of risks will differ. Perhaps you’ve experienced a risk-related project failure during development or post release, perhaps someone has stolen personally identifiable information, or perhaps a hardware or software failure resulted in a financial loss. These are some risks we’ve come to accept, and mitigation strategies are part of our development approaches and everyday work. Most IT professionals would agree that IT is good at identifying and managing the risks—but is this really the case? Or has risk management become simply buzz word for us?