A flood risk, four answers
The basement of a college floods once in thirty years. The server room is down there. What do you do?
You can live with it. You can move the room. You can add pumps and a water alarm. Or you can pay a company to host the servers. Each answer is a different response.
By the end of this lesson
Note
I can name the four responses to a risk and pick the right one for a scenario.
Key words
| Word | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Accept | decide the risk is small enough to live with | Low impact and low probability |
| Avoid | change the plan so the risk does not exist | Do not store data in the basement |
| Mitigate | make the probability or the impact smaller | |
| Transfer | pass the risk to another company by a contract | |
| Scope | what a project does and does not include | |
| Contract | a written agreement that both sides must follow | |
| Mitigation | an action that makes a risk smaller |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
Starter
Have a go
Starter
3 questionsYour answers are marked here and are not kept. A college account keeps every student’s marks.
Four responses
Accept. The impact is acceptable. For example, a risk with low impact and low probability.
Avoid. Change the scope of the work so the risk goes away.
Mitigate. Lower the probability or the impact.
Transfer. Pass the risk to another party by a contract.
Four responses with an example each
| Response | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Accept | Live with it, and write down that you chose to | A spare mouse might go missing |
| Avoid | Change the scope so the risk goes | Do not put data on staff USB sticks at all |
| Mitigate | Make it less likely or less harmful | Fit a water alarm and keep a backup off site |
| Transfer | Hand the risk to a company by a contract | Pay a hosting company to run the server |
The cells students fill in are left blank in this preview.
Two cautions
Accepting is a decision, not ignoring. Somebody senior writes it down.
Transferring does not remove every duty. If a hosting company loses customer data, the organisation can still be held responsible to the people whose data it is.