Risk IT

Risk IT provides an end-to-end, comprehensive view of all risks related to the use of information technology (IT) and a similarly thorough treatment of risk management, from the tone and culture at the top, to operational issues.
Risk IT was published in 2009 by ISACA. It is the result of a work group composed by industry experts and some academics of different nations, coming from organizations such as Ernst & Young, IBM, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Risk Management Insight, Swiss Life,and KPMG.
Definition.
IT risk is a part of business risk—specifically, the business risk associated with the use, ownership, operation, involvement, influence and adoption of IT within an enterprise. It consists of IT-related events that could potentially impact the business. It can occur with both uncertain frequency and magnitude, and it creates challenges in meeting strategic goals and objectives.
Management of business risk is an essential component of the responsible administration of any organization.
Owing to IT's importance to the overall business, IT risk should be treated like other key business risks.
The Risk IT framework explains IT risk and enables users to:
IT risk is to be managed by all the key business leaders inside the organization: it is not just a technical issue of IT department.
IT risk can be categorised in different ways:
The Risk IT framework is based on the principles of enterprise risk management standards/frameworks such as Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission ERM and ISO 31000.
In this way IT risk could be understood by upper management.
Risk IT principles.
Risk IT is built around the following principles:
IT risk communication components.
Major IT risk communication flows are:
An effective information should be:
Risk IT domains and processes.
The three domains of the Risk IT framework are listed below with the contained processes (three by domain); each process contains a number of activities:
Each process is detailed by:
For each domain a Maturity Model is depicted.
Risk evaluation.
The link between IT risk scenarios and ultimate business impact needs to be established to understand the effect of adverse events. Risk IT does not prescribe a single method. Different methods are available. Among them there are:
Risk scenarios.
Risk scenarios is the hearth of risk evaluation process. Scenarios can be derived in two different and complementary ways:
Each risk scenarios is analysed determining frequency and impact, based on the risk factors.
Risk response.
The purpose of defining a risk response is to bring risk in line with the overall defined risk appetite of the organization after risk analysis: i.e. the residual risk should be within the risk tolerance limits.
The risk can be managed according to four main strategies (or a combination of them):
Key risk indicators are metrics capable of showing that the organizaztion is subject or has a high probability of being subject to a risk that exceeds the defined risk appetite.
Practitioner Guide.
The second important document about Risk IT is the Practitioner Guide.
It is made up of eight sections:
Relationship with other ISACA frameworks.
Risk IT Framework complements ISACA’s COBIT, which provides a comprehensive framework for the control and governance of business-driven information-technology-based (IT-based) solutions and services. While COBIT sets good practices for the means of risk management by providing a set of controls to mitigate IT risk, Risk IT sets good practices for the ends by providing a framework for enterprises to identify, govern and manage IT risk.
Val IT allows business managers to get business value from IT investments, by providing a governance framework. VAL IT can be used to evaluate the actions determined by the Risk management process.
Relationship with other frameworks.
Risk IT accept Factor Analysis of Information Risk terminology and evaluation process.
ISO 27005.
For a comparison of Risk IT processes and those foreseen by ISO/IEC 27005 standard, see IT risk management#Risk management methodology and IT risk management#ISO 27005 framework
ISO 31000.
The Risk IT Practitioner Guide appendix 2 contains the comparison with ISO 31000
COSO.
The Risk IT Practitioner Guide appendix 4 contains the comparison with COSO