The 4 Sides of Risk Management

You can't run a business and make money without spending money on risky activities, like advertising campaigns where there's no guaranteed return on investment. Did you know that it's possible to make money by investing in risk management? For all of you Cautious Carls out there, this might be a more preferred way to grow your bottom line.

It boils down to common sense. If your efforts help to avoid an accident or a disaster that would otherwise cost your business buckets of cash, then you're profiting from the savings of an averted disaster. When it comes to risk management for businesses, there are four ways to go about it.

Risk Avoidance
Risk avoidance is literally doing whatever you can to entirely avoid a risk. This proactive approach is one that businesses prefer because it means foregoing the ramifications of a risk. The hot IT trend of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is a classic example of risk avoidance. Due to the fact that implementing BYOD brings new risks to a company's data, like greater risks from hackers and an employee losing or having their device stolen, many companies have made the intentional decision to not allow for BYOD. A decision like this may bum out a few workers that are really into their mobile devices, but you can tell them "tough cookies" because avoiding a major data breach is more important than impressing co-workers with a new smartphone.

Risk Prevention
There are some risks that you can't avoid. However, it's still possible to prevent problems stemming from risks that you've taken on. For example, let's say that you implement BYOD because you've decided that its benefits outweigh its risks. That's great, but now you have additional risks on your hands. With risk prevention, you spend time and resources implementing solutions that will prevent the effects of your risks. A risk prevention solution for a company allowing BYOD is Computerware's managed IT services. This proactive risk management solution monitors your systems in order to prevent catastrophe.

Risk Retention
Some risks you're able to avoid or even prevent, but there are times when your business has to cozy up and live with a risk. When this is the case, your best risk management tactic is risk retention. Your company's antivirus software is an example of risk retention. Virtually every business today has to connect with the virtual world in order to do business in the real world. The Internet is a hotbed of risks that you can't avoid or prevent, but you can retain them with security solutions like antivirus software, a firewall, or our enterprise-level Unified Threat Management tool. When Computerware monitors your company's system with our managed IT services, we retain every risk that we encounter.

Risk Transfer
Transferring a risk is the preferred risk management technique of every savvy business owner. This is where you're able to divert a risk entirely from your responsibility. You may be familiar with this method as "passing the buck." In the realm of IT, cloud computing is the ultimate example of this. A business housing an IT infrastructure is responsible for its maintenance, and the company foots the repair bill every time something goes wrong. When your data is stored in the cloud, the risk of hard drive failure, server crashes, and all the other hardware-related problems are transferred to the cloud computing company. When your data is stored in the cloud, budget-busting IT repair bills that everyone dreads become a thing of the past!

By utilizing these four methods of risk management, major problems are dealt with, prevented, and even avoided altogether! When risks are being properly managed, you'll see your bottom line grow because the risks will no longer develop into expensive problems. This is the advantage of being proactive with your IT services. Call us at (703) 821-8200 to have us manage your IT risks!