Best Practices for Risk Assessment in Strategy

Here's my cheat sheet for a first-pass quantitative risk assessment. Use this as your “day-one” playbook when leadership says: “Just give us a first pass. How bad could this get?” 1. Frame the business decision - Write one sentence that links the decision to money or mission. Example: “Should we spend $X to prevent a ransomware-driven hospital shutdown?” 2. Break the decision into a risk statement - Identify the chain: Threat → Asset → Effect → Consequence. Capture each link in a short phrase. Example: “Cyber criminal group → business email → data locked → widespread outage” 3. Harvest outside evidence for frequency and magnitude - Where has this, or something close, already happened? Examples: Industry base rates, previous incidents and near misses from your incident response team, analogous incidents in other sectors 4. Fill the gaps with calibrated experts - Run a quick elicitation for frequency and magnitude (5th, 50th, and 95th percentiles). - Weight experts by calibration scores if you have them; use a simple average if you don’t. 5. Assemble priors and simulate - Feed frequencies and losses into a Monte Carlo simulation. Use Excel, Python, R, whatever’s handy. 6. Stress-test the story - Host a 30-minute premortem: “It’s a year from now. The worst happened. What did we miss?” - Adjust inputs or add/modify scenarios, then re-run the analysis. 7. Deliver the first-cut answer - Provide leadership with executive-ready extracts. Examples: Range: “10% chance annual losses exceed $50M.” Sensitivity drivers: Highlight the inputs that most affect tail loss Value of information: Which dataset would shrink uncertainty fastest. Done. You now have a defensible, numbers-based initial assessment. Good enough for a go/no-go decision and a clear roadmap for deeper analysis. This fits on a sticky note. #riskassessment #RiskManagement #cyberrisk

Risk Management Made Simple: A Straightforward Approach for Every Project Manager Risk management is crucial to project success, yet it's often seen as complex and intimidating. Here’s a simple approach to managing risks in your projects: 1/ Identify Risks Early: → Start with a risk brainstorm: technical, operational, financial, and external risks. → Collaborate with your team to identify potential threats and opportunities. → Involve diverse team members to gain different perspectives on possible risks. → Use historical data and past project experiences to spot risks that may arise again. 2/ Assess and Prioritize: → Use a risk matrix to assess impact and likelihood. → Prioritize high-impact risks that could derail your project’s success. → Make sure you reassess risks periodically to capture any changes in impact or probability. → Don’t forget to consider opportunities as well—these should be prioritized, too! 3/ Develop Mitigation Plans: → For each priority risk, develop a strategy to minimize or avoid it. → Plan for contingencies to stay prepared for the unexpected. → Ensure the mitigation plans are realistic and actionable. → Set up early-warning systems so you can act quickly if needed. 4/ Assign Ownership: → Assign a team member to own each risk, ensuring accountability. → Ensure they track progress and adjust strategies as necessary. → Empower the risk owner with resources and authority to implement mitigation plans. → Ensure a straightforward escalation process if the risk owner needs help. 5/ Monitor and Update Regularly: → Schedule regular risk reviews and status updates. → Keep an eye on emerging risks and adjust plans as your project evolves. → Maintain an open feedback loop with stakeholders on the evolving risk landscape. → Use project management tools to automate risk tracking and reminders. 6/ Communicate Effectively: → Keep stakeholders informed about risk status and changes. → Be transparent about potential impacts and solutions. → Ensure communication is clear and consistent across all levels of the team. → Adjust your communication style based on your stakeholders' needs and preferences. Managing risk doesn’t have to be complicated. Focus on 𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗳𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴, and 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆; you'll set your project up for success. What’s one risk management tip you live by? Let’s share some wisdom!

If my boss asked me to "assess our risk surface area and fraud priorities", this is how I would get it done by 5PM tomorrow. Step by step process. 1 - Pull our last 90 days of fraud data. Not just the obvious stuff like chargeback rates, but the full spread: login attempts, account creation patterns, payment declines... everything. Why 90 days? Because fraudsters love to exploit seasonal patterns, and we need that context. 2 - Map out every single entry point where money moves. I'm talking checkout flows, refund processes, loyalty point redemptions... even those "small" marketing promotion codes everyone forgets about. (Fun fact: I once found a six-figure exposure in a forgotten legacy gift card system) 3 - Time for some real talk with our front-line teams. Customer service reps, payment ops folks, even the engineering team that handles our API integrations. These people see the weird edge cases before they show up in our dashboards. 4 - Create a heat map scoring each entry point on three factors: → Financial exposure (how much could we lose?) → Attack complexity (how hard is it to exploit?) → Detection capability (can we even see it happening?) 5 - Cross-reference our current fraud rules and models against this heat map. Brutal honesty required here – where are our blind spots? Which high-risk areas are we treating like low-risk ones? 6 - Pull transaction data for our top 10 riskiest areas and run scenario analysis. If fraud rates doubled tomorrow, what would break first? (It's usually not what leadership thinks) 7 - Document our current resource allocation vs. risk levels. Are we spending 80% of our time on 20% of our risk? Been there, fixed that. 8 - Draft a prioritized roadmap based on: → Quick wins (high impact, low effort) → Critical gaps (high risk, low coverage) → Strategic investments (future-proofing our defenses) 9 - Prepare three scenarios for leadership: → Minimum viable protection → Balanced approach → Fort Knox mode Because let's be real, budget conversations need options. 10 - Package it all up with clear metrics and KPIs for each priority area. Nothing gets funded without numbers to back it up. ps... Make it visual. Leadership loves a good heat map, and it makes complex risk assessments digestible. Trust me on this one