What is Risk?

You may have heard of this interesting word “Risk” a couple million times in your life. I know for a fact that I have heard it at least a couple of times each year when I was in school all those decades ago. But, what is Risk and how is it defined. If we take out our Merriam-Webster dictionary and look up the word risk it states that it is the possibility of loss or injury and it can also be said that it is exposed to dangerous conditions. So, doesn’t this sound familiar to you. If you have read my Security Perception then you know that security perception is the state to attain awareness or understanding to protect us from injury, pain, harm, or loss. So, security perception can all be summed up to “protect you from risk”.

Risk in our Lives

Risk can be anything and everything. We have grown up knowing what risk is and things to minimize this risk. When we were babies our parents most likely put that one valuable vase that was on the end table and once you started crawling they may have moved it up on the shelf. The reason for this is the risk of it breaking or harming you as a child. When it was possible at school your teacher may have a rule about no running in the hallways. The reason for this rule is to protect you and the school from the possibility of you hurting yourself or somebody else. The risk here would have possibly been damage to you or another individual.

Now when you got your driver’s license you most likely had to take and possibly retake two tests. One of these tests was in a form like you would have taken at school which was most likely multiple choice and the other test was a driving test. The reason for these tests is to make sure that you know and followed the rules or laws of the road. These laws were formed out of risk and the possible risk that may be involved like personal or property damage if these laws were not followed. Like speeding for example. The local and state level has determined the risk involved with a set of speeds and when they evaluated a speed that they deemed safe then those speeds would be posted as the maximum allotted speed for that area. This was done due to risk and analyzing the risk that could cause personal or property damage to you or somebody else.

Risk in today’s world

I am sure that you are aware that I have Risk in the category under security. So, what is risk from a security standpoint? As I have mentioned in the beginning that security perception is summed up to “protect you from risk” With this definition you will know that risk is very important to security. The most secure professional has to know what is at risk when defining a security program. This does not need to be focused on just the corporate world and can easily be placed in any category that may need to define risk.

So if we define risk in our home then you may once again go back to my example in Security Perception. If risk is the possibility of losing personal belongings or bodily harm in your home then you want to minimize that risk by locking your door, adding a security system, or installing security cameras. All these steps are to minimize your risk when dealing with your residence. To me, these are all something that I will be talking about in future projects as well as writing reviews for several different options that one can use to help minimize your risk at home.

Now that was a topic when dealing with risk at home. Let us take a look at another place we may see risk minimized by using security. The wonderful topic of your computer, mobile devices, and the great world of the internet. If you have read anything that deals with any type of news then I am sure that you are familiar with the risk that is involved when using these devices or connecting to the internet. When we are talking about the internet then you have the risk of people or organizations capturing your personal information and bank accounts, you can jeopardize your computer or device and have your hardware or software compromised, and so much more that is involved when dealing with technology. So, how do we minimize these risks? Well, you may be cautious about visiting unknown websites, being cautious about visiting not secure links that do not follow the HTTPS protocols. You may even use an antivirus program or a disk encryption feature. This list can go on and on depending on your knowledge of what risk is to you and how you can minimize that risk.

In Closing

As you have seen I have touched on a fraction of possible scenarios that describe risk and also given examples of how you can minimize that risk. The only thing that I can hopefully help you with is by understanding that everybody has defined risk in their life depending on personal lessons or knowledge. It is up to us to understand these risk and help minimize the impact when dealing with risk.