Effective Risk Management Sets Leaders Apart From Followers

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“No risk, no reward; no guts, no glory.” In business, this mantra poses challenges, especially when dealing with compliance and security—companies need to take risks to get ahead of competition and also take care to avoid overstepping their bounds. The company must address the point when something is no longer a risk, but an inevitable failure. Regulators ensure companies remain compliant with different laws and rules; if businesses fail to comply or try and push the envelope, they can expect to be penalized.

Risky Business

Companies are responsible for calculating what is too risky, while concurrently weighing the pros and cons of each choice. A personal risk that leads to failure may allow one to learn from the blunder and move forward. But companies do not always have such luxuries.

When a large corporation takes a risk, it has to consider a wide range of people: its employees, customers, clients, and investors. Do regulatory requirements drive all choices and should the company always play it safe? No risk, no reward, remember?

Time And Place For Everything

There is a time and place to take risks and defy expectations, and when it is far too dangerous to be non-compliant. Companies in the 21st century that play it safe are going to fall to the competition. “The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward” is becoming a culture rather than just a motivational poster. The businesses that push too hard, too fast will have less success, but the companies that remain calculated, deliberate, and informed when taking risks, are not really taking risks at all—they are making smart business decisions. The caveat associated with this is one cannot just jump into a shark tank without looking down first.

No matter what industry a company operates within, a crucial piece of security, compliance, and risk mitigation utilize statistical models and analytics that allow analysts to foresee lasting impacts, weigh costs, and make actionable decisions based on accessible information. What is vital to your survival, and your company’s ability to thrive in a competitive industry culture, are tools needed to make calculating risks easier and faster.

A security conference is taking place in Las Vegas, Nev. from July 27 to August 1 for the Black Hat USA 2013 conference. You can follow updates from the event with the Twitter hashtag: #Blackhat. To join the conversation and offer your ideas, follow us on Twitter and tweet us your thoughts.

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