Types of risk mitigation

Risk mitigation is the practice of reducing identified risks. It is one of four types of risk treatment with the others being risk avoidance, transfer and acceptance.

Techniques to mitigate risk are largely dependent on the type of risk that you want to reduce. The following are general types of mitigation technique, each with an example.

Regular audits may identify problems such as accounting errors or security vulnerabilities before they become larger problems. Audits can be used both as a process of risk identification and mitigation. For example, accounting audits are a way to reduce the risk of financial fraud.

Communicating a risk may serve to reduce it. For example, if a bank has identified a particular type of fraud as a risk, communicating it to front line managers may help to prevent it.

Contingency Plans 
Planning for critical situations such as natural disasters or security incidents can reduce the impact of such events should they occur.

The process of allocating your capital and resources in diverse areas to reduce risk and volatility. For example, a company that sells 100 products in 12 different categories will typically have more stable revenue than a company with a single product.

Due Diligence
Due diligence is the process of investigation before committing to something such as a contract or strategy. Basic due diligence such as checking the financial, environmental, corporate social responsibility and management practices of a potential partner is a basic step in risk reduction that is often considered a legal obligation.

Ergonomics is the design of products to suit human cognitive and physical characteristics. It is considered a tool of risk mitigation such as preventing the risk of repetitive strain injuries with well designed furniture and equipment.

Error Handling 
Designing systems so that errors are handled in such a way that processes, automation and user interfaces remain functional. Historically, systems were often designed to immediately halt upon finding any type of error. This is an unacceptable business risk in many scenarios. Well designed modern systems are designed to work around errors as far as possible.

In some cases entire facilities are built to mitigate risks. For example, a data center may be built to reduce security related risks.

Graceful Degradation


Measure & Reduce 

Mistake Proofing 

Redundancy is the practice of eliminating single points of failure by having two or more of each critical resource. For example, a company with 2,000 employees who all work out of a single location might consider having at least two geographically distributed offices to mitigate risks such as an infrastructure failure or a disaster that strikes a location.

Scalability And Capacity 
Building enough capacity and ensuring that you can scale to meet business volumes. For example, hiring enough customer service representatives so that you have ample capacity when an unexpected number of staff call in sick.

Establishing standards to guide business practices, decision making and design. For example, a technical security standard can reduce security risks if applied to all technology projects.

Subject Matter Expert
A subject matter expert is an authority in a particular business, technical or scientific domain. Review of decisions, designs and implementations by experts can reduce risks. For example, having a workplace safety expert review your work processes to implement improvements may reduce health and safety risks.

Testing such as product or system testing is a core risk mitigation technique. For example, properly testing the quality of a system will reduce the risk that it will fail at launch.

Validation of information before it is accepted by systems and processes. For example, validating user input in an expense management tool may reduce the risk of accounting errors.

Verifying information with authoritative information sources. For example, verifying the information on a mortgage application may reduce credit risk.

source from: https://simplicable.com/new/risk-mitigation



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