Profiling Risk: Why Security Teams Must Look Beyond the Existing Estate
- Matt Kent
- Sep 25
- 3 min read
Updated: 14 minutes ago
In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, traditional risk profiling is no longer enough. Security teams must shift focus from known risks to emerging threats that will disrupt business continuity. We explore why profiling risk is now a crucial for security teams to protect the future of the organisation.
Security teams often make the mistake of focusing too much on risks within their current estate and not enough on emerging risks. While managing known risks is important, profiling risk must now be proactive, anticipating future threats before they materialise.
With new technologies, market dynamics, and business strategies rapidly changing, security teams must shift their focus to external threats and new risk. The greatest threats often come from outside the existing infrastructure, and preparing for these risks is essential to securing long-term business continuity.
The Shift from Reactive to Proactive Risk Profiling
Being proactive not reactive, requires understanding technological innovations, geopolitical changes, and market shifts that impact the organisation. The ability to forecast risk before it disrupts the business will set apart successful security teams.
The Reality: Why Emerging Risks Demand a Shift in Focus
As businesses invest heavily in new technologies, including AI it brings with it new risks. Security teams must now look beyond current vulnerabilities and proactively assess how these shifts will affect their operations. De-risking new investments and products will be crucial in the future. Security professionals must take a multilateral approach, assessing risk through four lenses: technology, human, operational, and regulatory. It’s no longer enough to focus solely on technology alone; emerging risks span multiple areas and must be understood in that context.
The Disconnect: Why Traditional Approaches Aren’t Enough
For many security teams, the focus has traditionally been on identifying risks inside the existing estate. This includes scanning for vulnerabilities in legacy systems or ensuring that compliance measures are in place. While these tasks remain important, they don’t address future risks. Then, there is the age-old problem of communicating risk in a way that makes sense to business leaders. Complex methodologies and technical jargon obscure the true business impact of risk.
When security teams struggle to translate risks in terms that resonate with executives, they risk being sidelined on crucial business decisions. This can’t happen.
The Shift from Reactive to Proactive Risk Profiling
So, security teams must shift the focus onto emerging risk, not just existing ones. This requires understanding where the organisation is changing and how the market is impacting. The ability to forecast risk before it disrupts the business, will set apart successful security teams.
Why Emerging Risk Matters
Staying Ahead of Change - Security must now anticipate risks associated with market forces and new investment.
Aligning Security with Business Goals: Identifying emerging risks aligns security with the overall business strategy, not just IT.
Improving Communication: Simplifying complex risks into clear terms that resonate with executives is critical.
Key Skills for Profiling Emerging Risks
Risk Forecasting - Proactively predicting future risks based on trends.
Clear Communication - Translating complex risks into business terms for stakeholders.
Scenario Planning - Building actionable risk scenarios to guide strategy.
The Strategic Shift Required
Security teams must be prepared for a future marked by rapid change and become strategic partners in the business, aligning security with broader organisational goals and ensuring long-term resilience.
Final Thought
As organisations face new technologies and complex market shifts, emerging risks will become a growing concern. The future of risk management will be anticipating and mitigating what’s to come – not reacting to what’s happened in the past.
Author: Matt Kent is Director of Learning & Development at GRC-X, and formerly with the Information Security Forum. With a track record in pioneering GRC training and professional development, he regularly contributes as a thought leader, international congress speaker, and panelist on the future of security leadership.