Risk management

The challenge of managing risk when IT budgets tighten

I see an interesting sea change when it comes to risk: Thanks to the recession, as IT risk management is constrained by tightening IT budgets, the risk of doing business goes up.

As part of my security, compliance and disaster recovery coverage this year, I’ve listened to a lot of experts talk about the how-tos of risk management, such as, how CIOs need to stop taking a checklist approach to regulatory mandates and forge a risk-based strategy for compliance. Or how security officers still taking a buy-another-gadget approach to security will lose their jobs if they don’t focus on risk management. All this sounds good, as it implies that a rational scrutiny of risk can save companies money by focusing the available dollars on the most likely scenarios. But the reality is much worse. Continued »