NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 · PM-9

Risk Management Strategy

US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) · cited in 5 of our lessons

Explanation

What it asks for. The organisation must develop a comprehensive strategy to manage security and privacy risks, including risk tolerance, acceptable mitigation strategies and how risk is assessed and monitored, implement it consistently and review and update it periodically.

In practice. This means a board or executive-approved risk management framework that states risk appetite, links cyber risk to enterprise risk management and defines how risks are escalated and accepted. Auditors expect the approved strategy, evidence it is applied in decisions and review records. NIS2 places explicit accountability for cyber risk management on management bodies, and ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO 31000 offer similar structures.

Common gaps. Risk appetite statements are often too vague to guide decisions. Cyber risk is sometimes managed separately from enterprise risk, so executives see an incomplete picture.

The official text
a. Develops a comprehensive strategy to manage: 1. Security risk to organizational operations and assets, individuals, other organizations, and the Nation associated with the operation and use of organizational systems; and 2. Privacy risk to individuals resulting from the authorized processing of personally identifiable information; b. Implement the risk management strategy consistently across the organization; and c. Review and update the risk management strategy [Assignment: organization-defined frequency] or as required, to address organizational changes. Discussion: An organization-wide risk management strategy includes an expression of the security and privacy risk tolerance for the organization, security and privacy risk mitigation strategies, acceptable risk assessment methodologies, a process for evaluating security and privacy risk across the organization with respect to the organization’s risk tolerance, and approaches for monitoring risk over time. The senior accountable official for risk management (agency head or designated official) aligns information security management processes with strategic, operational, and budgetary planning processes. The risk executive function, led by the senior accountable official for risk management, can facilitate consistent application of the risk management strategy organization-wide. The risk management strategy can be informed by security and privacy risk-related inputs from other sources, both internal and external to the organization, to ensure that the strategy is broad-based and comprehensive. The supply chain risk management strategy described in [PM-30](#pm-30) can also provide useful inputs to the organization-wide risk management strategy.

From NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5, a work of the US government in the public domain.

Lessons that cite it

Real incidents where this item mattered.