Risks are inherent to every business. Though it’s impossible to completely avoid risks in any business area, such as operations, security, etc., you can take preventive measures to reduce their occurrence. This is where risk management software can help.
Risk management is a process that proactively identifies risks and evaluates their probability. Consequently, it helps your organization prioritize resources and take measures to avoid or mitigate risk impact. In other words, risk management is a holistic approach to avoiding risks and their impacts. You can best manage risks through specialized risk management software.
In this article, I’ll run through the criteria for choosing risk management software, then show you some top picks.
Risk Management Software Criteria
With hundreds of risk management software solutions in the market today, it’s hard to find one that meets your organization’s needs.
To make your decision easier, evaluate your risk management software based on this criteria:
- Ease of use: Any risk management software must be simple for users of all technical levels. In particular, the user interface, dashboards, and charts should be intuitive.
- Meeting compliance: Your chosen tool must be compliant with leading industry standards. Otherwise, you’re just inviting more risk.
- Proactive predictions: Good risk management software should consider multiple variables and uncertainties before predicting possible risks.
- Post-incident support: Mitigation and recovery are an integral part of risk management. Your software must support these post-event activities as well.
- Reporting and analytics: This can help you understand what went wrong and where so you can predict and avoid future risks.
- Integrations: It helps when your risk management software integrates seamlessly with your existing infrastructure.
These aspects can help you narrow down your software choices. But let’s take a look at some must-have features to further help you pick the top risk management software.
Risk Management Software Must-Have Features
The following are risk management software must-have features. That’s because they’re essential for predicting potential risks in today’s dynamic business environment.
- Identifies risks: Your software must continuously scan networks and other data points to identify risks as they emerge.
- Notifies you: The software must have advanced and customizable alerting features for sending notifications to the concerned team or individual.
- Analyzes in-depth: The risk management software must analyze different parameters to provide contextual information. It should also give you the possible next steps for risk mitigation.
- Prioritizes risks: Your software must prioritize risks so that you can assign resources accordingly.
- Comes with a dashboard: Your risk management software must display all reports, vulnerabilities, and important information on a single dashboard.
- Helps you with audits: The tool must generate the reports required for audits and compliance.
Based on the criteria and features above, here are my top picks for risk management software.
Top 5 IT Risk Management Software
The following are my top picks for risk management software. Let’s start at the top with GFI LanGuard!
1. GFI LanGuard
GFI LanGuard, a network scanner and monitor, has many advanced features for identifying risks and vulnerabilities. In particular, its vulnerability management feature continuously scans the network, including cloud environments and mobile devices. This way, it can identify 60,000+ vulnerabilities.
Its patch management capabilities automate patching to reduce risk, while the advanced reporting features comply with the leading industry standards.
Overall, GFI LanGuard promptly identifies vulnerabilities. As a result, it reduces their impact on your organization.
2. NAVEX One
NAVEX One is an integrated risk and compliance management software. Generally, it helps you anticipate and identify risks occurring because of internal or external factors.
It’s well-known for identifying human errors, including ethical lapses. In the process, NAVEX One protects your organization from incurring legal and ethical consequences. NAVEX One also scales well with your business and creates a dynamic environment for leveraging opportunities as they emerge.
Finally, NAVEX One simplifies risk management and provides notifications and actionable insights to mitigate potential risk impact.
3. OneTrust
OneTrust is a SaaS solution for managing an organization’s privacy, security, and governance. Notably, this solution ensures compliance with some of the most stringent data privacy laws, such as GDPR.
To this end, it tracks the complete lifecycle of personal data and identifies vulnerabilities that can lead to data breaches.
Furthermore, OneTrust handles third-party risks from vendors. You can deploy the software on the cloud or on-premises, depending on your business needs.
Overall, OneTrust provides the necessary tools and information to ensure data privacy and compliance.
4. Onspring
Onspring is an automated business processing solution that ensures Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC). Its agile processes and tools provide the flexibility and scalability to thrive in a dynamic environment. The software’s risk assessment capabilities ensure you’re a step ahead in tackling common vulnerabilities.
Additionally, it supports end-to-end operational, reputational, and organizational risk management. Onspring also works with third-party vendors to reduce risk.
Overall, Onspring is a comprehensive GRC software for mitigating risks and streamlining compliance and audit-related productivity within your organization.
5. Reciprocity
Reciprocity is a GRC tool that adds risk handling to your organization’s strategy. The process makes assessing risk at every stage of business planning and implementation easier.
Reciprocity’s intuitive dashboard provides contextual information to reduce your exposure to vulnerabilities. The software’s integrations make it easy to streamline risk mitigation processes and policies. Reciprocity also ensures compliance with leading industry standards.
Overall, Reciprocity provides a unified view of your organization’s risk and compliance. You can also act and strategize against risk based on its insights.
The five picks above are competitive and can provide the risk management capabilities you need.
As a next step, evaluate the risk management software picks mentioned here to determine the right fit for your organization.
Before I wrap up, let’s quickly recap.
Final Thoughts
Risk management is essential to every organization’s operations. Without it, it’s impossible to mitigate the financial and reputational impact of unfortunate incidents. As a result, it’s important to consider a variety of criteria when choosing software that best fits your business needs. Given the complexity of modern networks, risk management software like GFI LanGuard—one of my top software picks—can provide the tools and visibility you need to fix vulnerabilities before they impact your organization.
Do you have more questions about risk management? Check out the FAQ and Resources sections below!
FAQ
How does risk management work?
Risk management software continuously collects, monitors, and analyzes data from different areas of your business. Accordingly, it sends notifications and provides contextual information for fixing any vulnerability.
Does risk management software help with compliance?
Yes, most risk management platforms help with compliance. These tools help you meet different standard requirements. Additionally, they also help generate audit reports. You can always implement the required changes after your internal audits.
What are the types of risk management?
Risk management comes in four types—acceptance, transference, avoidance, and reduction. Risk acceptance is about choosing to accept risk because the cost of not doing so could be higher. Transference lets you transfer the risk to an external agency, like a legal or financial firm. Avoidance includes taking proactive, risk-avoidance measures. Lastly, risk reduction includes steps for reducing risk probability.
Who is responsible for implementing risk management within an organization?
It depends on your organizational culture and hierarchy. In most cases, the management, including the CEO and board members, comes up with and implements risk management strategies within an organization.
What is a risk management plan?
A risk management plan is a document that details the steps an organization must take to avoid risks. It also includes risk-mitigating actions and reducing risk impact.
Resources
TechGenix: Article on Enterprise Risk Management
Learn more about enterprise risk management and how you can use it to improve productivity.
TechGenix: Guide to Developing an Information Security and Risk Management Strategy
Educate yourself on how to develop an Information Security and Risk Management Strategy.
TechGenix: Article on Risk-Based Approaches to Patch Management
Learn about the risk-based approach to patch management.
TechGenix: Article on Governance, Risk, and Compliance
Understand all about Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC).
TechGenix: Guide to Creating a Disaster Recovery Plan Template
Find out how to create a disaster recovery plan template.
