Business understanding

Risk management is a complex and comprehensive process. It’s definitely not a soft skill — or, at least, not just one. There are many types of risk, including compliance, security, operational, financial and reputational risks. Risk managers require a combination of both hard and soft skills to successfully address all the various risks. For example, compliance is a…

Risk managers need to know the potential cost of network outages and security breaches, as well as the likely financial impact of other business risks. Ultimately, financial risk will get everyone’s attention in the C-suite and individual departments. The costs of lost productivity, lost income and financial penalties can be crippling to a business if…

If there’s one thing governments do well, it’s regulating things. Regulations are constantly being added and updated. Risk managers must invest some of their time to stay up to date on all the changes and understand new and evolving regulatory requirements.

After preparing the ranked list of risks, a risk manager then needs to lead the process of planning how to manage them. That could include accepting risks that are deemed reasonable based on an organization’s agreed-upon risk appetite and risk tolerance or adopting strategies to mitigate risks so they pose less of a business threat. In other…

Risk management is the process of identifying, assessing and managing potential issues that could have a negative impact on an organization’s business operations and financial performance. It involves being mindful of potential risks and what could go wrong — both the expected and the unexpected. Risk managers must be aware of all forms of risk…

Risk managers also need to be able to solve problems. While some risks might require passing the issue on to someone above a risk manager’s pay grade, others often will be left to the risk manager to solve. As a result, they need to like getting their hands dirty from a problem-solving standpoint.