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Over 50% of organizations across industries believe security risks have never been higher—and this is only one of the many risk types an average organization has to juggle as its threat landscape evolves.
To deal with threats effectively, organizations can leverage various risk mitigation strategies. The challenge here lies in developing a strategy that addresses an organization’s unique risk landscape and targets each threat with an appropriate response.
This guide will show you how to do so by covering:
- Definition and types of risk mitigation strategies
- Common types of risks your organization is exposed to
- A five-step process for building a solid risk mitigation strategy
What is a risk mitigation strategy?
A risk mitigation strategy is a set of controls, practices, and procedures designed to reduce, limit, or eliminate threats to an organization’s daily operations or long-term viability.
Contrary to popular belief, risk mitigation isn’t the same as risk management—the former is a component of a broader risk management strategy. Mitigation strategies are critical to treating risk effectively and should be consistently assessed in line with an overall risk management program. Otherwise, a given mitigation strategy can become irrelevant over time as a threat landscape shifts.
Another common misconception is that organizations can adopt a universal risk mitigation strategy to handle threats. While some high-level steps may overlap, each organization should create a unique strategy that matches its risk appetite and threat landscape.
Main types of risk mitigation strategies
Depending on your risk appetite, as well as the likelihood and severity of specific threats, you can choose between the following risk mitigation strategies:
- Risk acceptance: If the risk event’s impact on your organization isn’t significant, you can take on the risk without any specific action. The same goes if the cost of mitigation outweighs the potential impact of the risk event.
- Risk avoidance: You should avoid risks beyond your appetite altogether. For example, you might decide not to onboard a vendor whose security measures are too weak to protect the information they’ll have access to.
- Risk transfer: Some risks can be transferred to third parties, typically through contractual agreements or insurance. For example, you can transfer some security risks to a cloud service provider (CSP) through the shared responsibility model.
- Risk monitoring: This refers to the continuous monitoring of known and emerging threats over time. The key here is to evaluate if the risk levels for existing threats change or the controls you’ve implemented are still relevant. Risks that may have been accepted may not become acceptable over time as your organization matures and evolves, and threat actors become more sophisticated. Similarly, your threat intelligence may suggest newer risks that demand action.
What types of risk exist?
The types of risks your organization is exposed to largely depend on your industry and the specifics of your operations. The following table outlines the most common types:
Each risk calls for specific mitigation measures, so you must uncover the most notable ones and devise the mitigation strategy accordingly.
{{cta_withimage4="/cta-blocks"}} | How to manage risk with Vanta
5 core steps for building a risk mitigation strategy
You can follow these steps to develop a comprehensive strategy that addresses and mitigates all the key risks:
- Identify potential threats
- Perform a risk assessment
- Establish a priority list
- Set up continuous monitoring
- Create reports
Below, we’ll elaborate on each step to outline the specific activities it involves.
Step 1: Identify potential threats
The most important step toward effective risk mitigation is uncovering all the threats your organization faces. Keeping in mind the common risk types, doing so involves examining your:
- Compliance obligations
- Security measures
- Contractual agreements
- Relationships with third parties
During risk identification, you should involve all key stakeholders to get their input. For example, your IT team will know your organization’s security posture the best, while the legal and compliance teams will outline your regulatory obligations.
Ideally, you’ll create a centralized risk register with all notable threats. Each identified risk should also be coupled with the corresponding documentation (results of a security review, vendor contracts, documentation from previous projects, etc.).
Step 2: Perform a risk assessment
After uncovering all notable risks (i.e. “risk scenarios”), assess and compare them according to their likelihood of occurrence and possible impact. This will inform the specific mitigation strategy, so make sure to allocate enough time and resources to this step.
You can use various risk assessment methodologies (qualitative, quantitative, etc.) to review different threats. When you do, categorize risks clearly to map your plan of action. The most common way to do this is by using a risk matrix that helps you visualize risks, their likelihood, and severity.
Another best practice is to align security risks to business objectives and strategy. While it’s impossible to mitigate all risks you detect, using both short and long-term business objectives as a north star when assessing risks can help shape mitigation strategies and guide investments in effective risk treatment.
Step 3: Establish a priority list
After your risks are categorized and laid out, you can prioritize them to allocate resources effectively. Look at the risk matrix and see which risks have the highest chances of occurring and the most severe consequences.
This is also where you’ll start matching different mitigation strategies to the corresponding risk. For example, you might forego mitigating less severe risks to focus on more pressing ones according to your risk appetite.
Step 4: Set up continuous monitoring
Identifying risks and implementing the corresponding mitigation measures isn’t a one-off process—you must continuously reassess risks and adapt your mitigation strategy accordingly.
To do so, you need to set up an effective continuous monitoring process. Aim for real-time (or at least near real-time) insight into the identified risks, and perform regular reviews to stay ahead of changes in your organization's risk profile.
This is important because both your risk profile and business needs will evolve with time, and the two should always be in sync.
Step 5: Create reports
Effective reporting is crucial to risk mitigation because it ensures all stakeholders and teams understand the organization’s risk landscape and can do their part to manage threats.
As your risk landscape changes, you need to keep your mitigation strategy updated to make informed decisions and adhere to compliance and regulatory changes more easily. The problem is that such updates often involve manual reporting processes, which only provide a point-in-time snapshot that may be outdated by the time it reaches stakeholders.
A much better alternative is to use an automated reporting solution that makes real-time information readily available to the involved parties. Ideally, such a solution will come with visual dashboards that provide real-time insights into the current risk posture.
How to effectively implement a risk mitigation strategy?
As you follow the steps for implementing a risk mitigation strategy, you can use these best practices to make the process more efficient and effective:
- Involve stakeholders early in the process: Risk awareness starts at the top, so make sure C-level executives and other stakeholders are on board with the mitigation strategy
- Ensure that the necessary resources are allocated to risk mitigation: Effective risk mitigation requires sufficient time, personnel, and financial resources, so don’t compromise on it
- Assign clear roles and responsibilities: The diverse risk landscape most organizations operate in calls for cross-platform collaboration, so make sure everyone is clear on their duties
- Set clear timelines for recording and reporting: Set a specific cadence you’ll follow when measuring and reporting risks to enable streamlined procedures
Potential risk mitigation implementation challenges
A common issue organizations encounter while developing a risk mitigation strategy is a lack of organization-wide awareness. Organizational risk affects operations on a systemic level, so everyone should understand the importance of its effective mitigation.
“
Creating general awareness around the risk, the specific mitigation, and the responsibilities of personnel in the organization is a commonly overlooked aspect of risk mitigation. Many times, teams are hesitant to announce risk mitigation plans, but without creating awareness around changes and related responsibilities, the plan may fall short during implementation.”
Another potential challenge is the time investment. Risk scoring, monitoring, and reporting can be quite time-consuming if done manually, which can be a particular issue for small and resource-constrained organizations without sufficient personnel and resources.
The good news is that there’s a simple way around this challenge—leveraging automation software to streamline the time-consuming aspects of risk mitigation.
Manage risk effectively with Vanta
Vanta is a trust and compliance management platform that streamlines and automates all notable aspects of risk mitigation. It offers a dedicated Risk Management product with various features that eliminate manual work, such as:
- Automated risk register with pre-built risk scenarios
- Automated risk scoring and prioritization
- Pre-built risk assessment workflows customizable according to different criteria
- A robust dashboard with a centralized view of risk scenarios and mitigation strategies
- Over 375 integrations with popular software
Thanks to these features, you can remediate risk up to 45% faster and save plenty of time for other GRC work.
Schedule a custom demo of Vanta’s Risk Management product to see its features in action.
{{cta_simple28="/cta-blocks"}} | Risk management product page
Risk
How to build a successful risk mitigation strategy
Looking to upgrade to continuous, automated GRC and get visibility across your entire program?
Over 50% of organizations across industries believe security risks have never been higher—and this is only one of the many risk types an average organization has to juggle as its threat landscape evolves.
To deal with threats effectively, organizations can leverage various risk mitigation strategies. The challenge here lies in developing a strategy that addresses an organization’s unique risk landscape and targets each threat with an appropriate response.
This guide will show you how to do so by covering:
- Definition and types of risk mitigation strategies
- Common types of risks your organization is exposed to
- A five-step process for building a solid risk mitigation strategy
What is a risk mitigation strategy?
A risk mitigation strategy is a set of controls, practices, and procedures designed to reduce, limit, or eliminate threats to an organization’s daily operations or long-term viability.
Contrary to popular belief, risk mitigation isn’t the same as risk management—the former is a component of a broader risk management strategy. Mitigation strategies are critical to treating risk effectively and should be consistently assessed in line with an overall risk management program. Otherwise, a given mitigation strategy can become irrelevant over time as a threat landscape shifts.
Another common misconception is that organizations can adopt a universal risk mitigation strategy to handle threats. While some high-level steps may overlap, each organization should create a unique strategy that matches its risk appetite and threat landscape.
Main types of risk mitigation strategies
Depending on your risk appetite, as well as the likelihood and severity of specific threats, you can choose between the following risk mitigation strategies:
- Risk acceptance: If the risk event’s impact on your organization isn’t significant, you can take on the risk without any specific action. The same goes if the cost of mitigation outweighs the potential impact of the risk event.
- Risk avoidance: You should avoid risks beyond your appetite altogether. For example, you might decide not to onboard a vendor whose security measures are too weak to protect the information they’ll have access to.
- Risk transfer: Some risks can be transferred to third parties, typically through contractual agreements or insurance. For example, you can transfer some security risks to a cloud service provider (CSP) through the shared responsibility model.
- Risk monitoring: This refers to the continuous monitoring of known and emerging threats over time. The key here is to evaluate if the risk levels for existing threats change or the controls you’ve implemented are still relevant. Risks that may have been accepted may not become acceptable over time as your organization matures and evolves, and threat actors become more sophisticated. Similarly, your threat intelligence may suggest newer risks that demand action.
What types of risk exist?
The types of risks your organization is exposed to largely depend on your industry and the specifics of your operations. The following table outlines the most common types:
Each risk calls for specific mitigation measures, so you must uncover the most notable ones and devise the mitigation strategy accordingly.
{{cta_withimage4="/cta-blocks"}} | How to manage risk with Vanta
5 core steps for building a risk mitigation strategy
You can follow these steps to develop a comprehensive strategy that addresses and mitigates all the key risks:
- Identify potential threats
- Perform a risk assessment
- Establish a priority list
- Set up continuous monitoring
- Create reports
Below, we’ll elaborate on each step to outline the specific activities it involves.
Step 1: Identify potential threats
The most important step toward effective risk mitigation is uncovering all the threats your organization faces. Keeping in mind the common risk types, doing so involves examining your:
- Compliance obligations
- Security measures
- Contractual agreements
- Relationships with third parties
During risk identification, you should involve all key stakeholders to get their input. For example, your IT team will know your organization’s security posture the best, while the legal and compliance teams will outline your regulatory obligations.
Ideally, you’ll create a centralized risk register with all notable threats. Each identified risk should also be coupled with the corresponding documentation (results of a security review, vendor contracts, documentation from previous projects, etc.).
Step 2: Perform a risk assessment
After uncovering all notable risks (i.e. “risk scenarios”), assess and compare them according to their likelihood of occurrence and possible impact. This will inform the specific mitigation strategy, so make sure to allocate enough time and resources to this step.
You can use various risk assessment methodologies (qualitative, quantitative, etc.) to review different threats. When you do, categorize risks clearly to map your plan of action. The most common way to do this is by using a risk matrix that helps you visualize risks, their likelihood, and severity.
Another best practice is to align security risks to business objectives and strategy. While it’s impossible to mitigate all risks you detect, using both short and long-term business objectives as a north star when assessing risks can help shape mitigation strategies and guide investments in effective risk treatment.
Step 3: Establish a priority list
After your risks are categorized and laid out, you can prioritize them to allocate resources effectively. Look at the risk matrix and see which risks have the highest chances of occurring and the most severe consequences.
This is also where you’ll start matching different mitigation strategies to the corresponding risk. For example, you might forego mitigating less severe risks to focus on more pressing ones according to your risk appetite.
Step 4: Set up continuous monitoring
Identifying risks and implementing the corresponding mitigation measures isn’t a one-off process—you must continuously reassess risks and adapt your mitigation strategy accordingly.
To do so, you need to set up an effective continuous monitoring process. Aim for real-time (or at least near real-time) insight into the identified risks, and perform regular reviews to stay ahead of changes in your organization's risk profile.
This is important because both your risk profile and business needs will evolve with time, and the two should always be in sync.
Step 5: Create reports
Effective reporting is crucial to risk mitigation because it ensures all stakeholders and teams understand the organization’s risk landscape and can do their part to manage threats.
As your risk landscape changes, you need to keep your mitigation strategy updated to make informed decisions and adhere to compliance and regulatory changes more easily. The problem is that such updates often involve manual reporting processes, which only provide a point-in-time snapshot that may be outdated by the time it reaches stakeholders.
A much better alternative is to use an automated reporting solution that makes real-time information readily available to the involved parties. Ideally, such a solution will come with visual dashboards that provide real-time insights into the current risk posture.
How to effectively implement a risk mitigation strategy?
As you follow the steps for implementing a risk mitigation strategy, you can use these best practices to make the process more efficient and effective:
- Involve stakeholders early in the process: Risk awareness starts at the top, so make sure C-level executives and other stakeholders are on board with the mitigation strategy
- Ensure that the necessary resources are allocated to risk mitigation: Effective risk mitigation requires sufficient time, personnel, and financial resources, so don’t compromise on it
- Assign clear roles and responsibilities: The diverse risk landscape most organizations operate in calls for cross-platform collaboration, so make sure everyone is clear on their duties
- Set clear timelines for recording and reporting: Set a specific cadence you’ll follow when measuring and reporting risks to enable streamlined procedures
Potential risk mitigation implementation challenges
A common issue organizations encounter while developing a risk mitigation strategy is a lack of organization-wide awareness. Organizational risk affects operations on a systemic level, so everyone should understand the importance of its effective mitigation.
“
Creating general awareness around the risk, the specific mitigation, and the responsibilities of personnel in the organization is a commonly overlooked aspect of risk mitigation. Many times, teams are hesitant to announce risk mitigation plans, but without creating awareness around changes and related responsibilities, the plan may fall short during implementation.”
Another potential challenge is the time investment. Risk scoring, monitoring, and reporting can be quite time-consuming if done manually, which can be a particular issue for small and resource-constrained organizations without sufficient personnel and resources.
The good news is that there’s a simple way around this challenge—leveraging automation software to streamline the time-consuming aspects of risk mitigation.
Manage risk effectively with Vanta
Vanta is a trust and compliance management platform that streamlines and automates all notable aspects of risk mitigation. It offers a dedicated Risk Management product with various features that eliminate manual work, such as:
- Automated risk register with pre-built risk scenarios
- Automated risk scoring and prioritization
- Pre-built risk assessment workflows customizable according to different criteria
- A robust dashboard with a centralized view of risk scenarios and mitigation strategies
- Over 375 integrations with popular software
Thanks to these features, you can remediate risk up to 45% faster and save plenty of time for other GRC work.
Schedule a custom demo of Vanta’s Risk Management product to see its features in action.
{{cta_simple28="/cta-blocks"}} | Risk management product page
| Role: | GRC responsibilities: |
|---|---|
| Board of directors | Central to the overarching GRC strategy, this group sets the direction for the compliance strategy. They determine which standards and regulations are necessary for compliance and align the GRC strategy with business objectives. |
| Chief financial officer | Primary responsibility for the success of the GRC program and for reporting results to the board. |
| Operations managers from relevant departments | This group owns processes. They are responsible for the success and direction of risk management and compliance within their departments. |
| Representatives from relevant departments | These are the activity owners. These team members are responsible for carrying out specific compliance and risk management tasks within their departments and for integrating these tasks into their workflows. |
| Contract managers from relevant department | These team members are responsible for managing interactions with vendors and other third parties in their department to ensure all risk management and compliance measures are being taken. |
| Chief information security officer (CISO) | Defines the organization’s information security policy, designs risk and vulnerability assessments, and develops information security policies. |
| Data protection officer (DPO) or legal counsel | Develops goals for data privacy based on legal regulations and other compliance needs, designs and implements privacy policies and practices, and assesses these practices for effectiveness. |
| GRC lead | Responsible for overseeing the execution of the GRC program in collaboration with the executive team as well as maintaining the organization’s library of security controls. |
| Cybersecurity analyst(s) | Implements and monitors cybersecurity measures that are in line with the GRC program and business objectives. |
| Compliance analyst(s) | Monitors the organization’s compliance with all regulations and standards necessary, identifies any compliance gaps, and works to mitigate them. |
| Risk analyst(s) | Carries out the risk management program for the organization and serves as a resource for risk management across various departments, including identifying, mitigating, and monitoring risks. |
| IT security specialist(s) | Implements security controls within the IT system in coordination with the cybersecurity analyst(s). |
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