Running a business comes with a lot of risks. Cybercriminals perpetrating high-profile breaches, or worse, undetected breaches, are only one of the many threats to your business. Businesses need to be on top of risk management to keep flexible and deal with any bad luck that comes their way, be it the internal threat, cybercriminals, or natural disasters.

The size of your business size doesn’t matter when it comes to risk, and having a risk manager on staff will benefit everyone. In fact, risk managers have been taking a larger and more serious role in businesses since the 2008 financial crisis. Financial stress made risk less acceptable, and executives started taking risk mitigation a little more seriously. As the threat landscape grows, risk managers aren’t going anywhere.

Why have a risk manager?

Hiring a risk manager can displace a lot of worry and guesswork when it comes to security and mitigating risks. The risk manager position means you have someone on staff focusing on the following things so you don’t have to:

• Establishing and monitoring key risk indicators and implementing corrective actions to mitigate risks
• Analyzing transactions, internal reports, financial information and anything else that might indicate potential fraud risks
• Creating and maintaining reports of any risks and his or her recommendations on how to handle them
• Creating policies and procedures that address identified risks
• Looking at your company’s internal control framework and evaluating if it is effective for addressing risks while accomplishing goals and objectives
• Offering training and technical support for all staff on risk management strategies and any programs put into place
• Researching and purchasing the proper insurance

What to look for in a risk manager

Attracting talented risk managers is not necessarily easy, but it is important. Young risk management professionals may have a different way of looking at risk, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t up for the job. When you’re hiring a risk manager, look for these skills and abilities:

• Advanced understanding of technology
• Excellent decision making skills
• Sound judgment
• Ability to execute a plan
• Timeliness
• Highly organized
• Able to quickly and easily adapt to changing situations
• Strong attention to detail
• Able to communicate with employees at all levels both verbally and orally

Your risk manager needs to be a leader who can work with executives to help the entire organization understand what is needed and actions to take.  He or she needs to be able to quickly solve unexpected problems and communicate solutions. Your risk manager needs to be someone you can trust.

Risk management pieces may be built into job descriptions throughout your organization, but having one person to bring it all together and focus on the larger picture will benefit every organization.

Without proper risk management, a crisis, large or small, could cripple any company and possibly put it out of business. Investing in a risk manager is an investment in the future of your organization. Data breaches are common and costly, weather is getting more severe and cannot be prevented.  You need to prepare; you need to manage risk, and someone needs to be in charge.