Risk registers are a widespread utility among many cybersecurity professionals that allow practitioners to track and measure business risks in one place. This type of reporting can quickly help align your teams to the initiatives that matter and save valuable resources, time, and labor. By utilizing compliance, scope, and efficacy, any project team can utilize a risk register to better their cybersecurity.
Examples of Risk Registers for Cybersecurity Leaders
Creating a register might seem easy using a generic project plan risk register template found online, but properly managing risk, identifying potential impact, and analyzing risk assessment can be difficult. Deciding what goes into a risk register depends on your organization’s cybersecurity posture, potential, residual, and identified risks. Risk registers are typically used by security teams to identify potential risk events, with the likelihood, impact, and description of an event to track the risk. A separate record should accompany this inventory to log control deficiencies that can contribute to the risks included inside your risk register. Coordinating with stakeholders, project managers, and other personnel in your company is necessary for accurately scaling and reviewing the risk log in your register. But using a risk register alone proves nothing towards compliance if it’s not accompanied by a risk management plan to continuously monitor and track your compliance initiatives.
What should be included in a risk register? As shown below, your risk register should include:
| Included in the risk register | |
| Risk Description | Describe the measured risk and how it threatens the organization. |
| Cause | The event or trigger that causes the risk to happen. |
| Result or Impact | The impact your organization faces if the risk occurs. |
| Likelihood | How probable the risk is to happen to your company. |
| Outcome | How detrimental the risk can be if it happens. |
| Risk Level | How high of a priority the risk is based on your risk matrix. |
| Cost | The expense to mitigate the risk or minimize its impact as much as possible. |
| Mitigation Actions | The actions the security team carried out toward risk mitigation. |
By using an Integrated Risk Management (IRM) solution responsible for managing risk continuously, risk registers function more as a method for reporting amongst team members than actively proving compliance. As a static form of reporting, there’s potential room for error and impact on a risk response plan if a risk register is not supplemented by continuous compliance. But having a risk register in place can help delegate across risk management, track risk owners, improve risk identification, streamline risk analysis, your response and action plans, and risk response based on high, medium, or low cybersecurity risk categories.
Many cybersecurity frameworks and standards in use today require risk registers as a supplementary way of proving your organization is effectively executing its risk management processes in tandem with a continuous solution. Utilizing an integrated cybersecurity risk management solution like CyberStrong, you can monitor and control gaps across many frameworks, track potential project risk information across an enterprise, and measure your cybersecurity posture.
Creating and maintaining a risk register can be automated and streamlined using CyberStrong's patented AI to quantify risk and save your organization valuable time, labor, and resources. If you have questions about creating a risk register or how CyberStrong can help automate your compliance process, click here to request a free demo.
