What is Risk Register?

Understanding Risk Register

A Risk Register serves as the central repository documenting an organization's identified security risks, their assessment, and treatment plans. Far more than a simple list, effective risk registers capture crucial context about each risk: detailed descriptions of threat scenarios, potential business impacts, likelihood assessments based on relevant factors, existing controls that might mitigate the risk, planned additional controls, ownership assignments for risk treatment, and timelines for implementation. They typically support risk prioritization through consistent scoring methodologies, whether qualitative (High/Medium/Low) or quantitative (expected annual loss). Organizations use risk registers to drive resource allocation decisions, track treatment progress over time, maintain institutional memory about risk decisions, and demonstrate due diligence to auditors and regulators. Common implementation challenges include keeping registers current as the threat landscape evolves, achieving appropriate granularity (neither too high-level to be actionable nor too detailed to be maintainable), and effectively communicating register contents to business stakeholders. The most valuable risk registers balance comprehensiveness with usability, serving as living documents that actively inform security program priorities rather than compliance artifacts.