To Risk Analyse, or Not to Risk Analyse: That’s the Question

Risk analysis is a key activity for organisations that are looking to protect their valuable information assets against threats, such as malicious actors. It is one of the essential parts of risk management and is used to justify and prioritise what assets require the attention of which potential security controls. Risk management, and more specifically, risk analysis, is an activity that should be performed continuously. However, recent studies indicate that this is not always the case. As such, this paper investigates risk analysis as it is performed in practice in different Swedish public sector organisations. The results are based on semi-structured interviews with 17 senior security experts, an analysis of standards, and a national method support aiming to fill the gap between standard and practice. The results are presented in three themes: how, when and why risk analysis is performed. Of note, we identify that there is an issue of overlooking specific assets or systems when establishing an organisational-wide risk profile and a general recognition of the necessity for risk analysis, albeit not always in alignment with a classic risk analysis.