Because most risk registers are just expensive spreadsheets of wishful thinking.)
Let’s be honest: 80% of the risk registers I review look “fine”, until you actually try to use them.
They tick every box: probability, impact, owner, treatment.
But when a real incident happens, nobody opens them, nobody trusts them, and half the data is already outdated.
That’s not a “governance issue.” That’s a design failure.
Here are five real, field-level mistakes that make risk registers useless, and how to fix them.
1. Mistake #1: Risks That Describe Controls, Not Exposure
You’d be shocked how many registers start like this:
“Lack of multi-factor authentication.”
“No backup policy.”
“Absence of incident response plan.”
That’s not a risk. That’s a missing control.
A risk describes what could happen to the organization, not what control you forgot to implement.
Here’s the test:
If you can prefix it with “The risk that…” and it still makes sense, you’re on the right track.
✅ “The risk that unauthorized access compromises confidential data due to weak authentication.”
Fix: Rewrite each risk as a scenario with cause, event, and consequence.
You’ll instantly separate technical symptoms from actual exposures.
2. Mistake #2: Registers That Age Like Milk
Your register was last updated in March.
Then the org moved to the cloud in April.
Merged with another entity in May.
And onboarded AI tools in June.
Guess what? Your risk context changed, your register didn’t.
That’s not negligence; it’s process inertia.
Most companies still treat risk registers as annual rituals, not living systems.
Fix:
Implement a light-touch “continuous review” approach.
Owners validate risk status quarterly (literally five minutes).
Automate change triggers (e.g., new project, new supplier, new regulation).
A good risk register breathes. A bad one fossilizes.
3. Mistake #3: Ratings Without a Common Currency
Classic scene:
Risk A: “High likelihood, medium impact.”
Risk B: “Low likelihood, high impact.”
Risk C: “Medium-medium.”
…and no one agrees what any of it means.
Why? Because the scales aren’t anchored in business reality.
Most registers still rely on subjective 1–5 scales, filled by people who interpret “medium” differently.
It’s pseudo-quantification.
Fix:
Translate your scales into actual business terms.
Likelihood = frequency or time horizon (“once per year,” “once per decade”).
Impact = financial, reputational, or operational loss estimates (“<€100K,” “service downtime <4h”).
Then calibrate the scale by domain (cyber ≠ legal ≠ financial).
If everyone in the room can’t explain the difference between “3” and “4,” your register is a guessing game, not a tool.
4. Mistake #4: Risk Treatments That Never End
Here’s one of my favorites:
“Mitigation: implement security awareness program.”
“Status: ongoing.”
“Due date: N/A.”
Translation: We’ll do this forever and call it progress.
Perpetual treatments kill credibility.
When every risk has an “ongoing” mitigation, your register becomes a graveyard of eternal projects.
Fix:
Every treatment must have a closure condition, how do we know it’s “done”?
Assign an accountable owner and due date.
If it’s a recurring control (like awareness), move it to the control inventory, not the risk register.
Your risk register should track decisions, not maintenance tasks.
5. Mistake #5: No Trace Between Risks, Controls, and Incidents
This one separates amateurs from professionals.
Most registers live in isolation: they list risks, but they’re not connected to controls or incidents.
So when something breaks, you can’t trace which control failed, or which risk materialized.
Fix:
Link your risk register with:
Control libraries (ISO 27001 Annex A, NIST, DORA).
Incident logs (to validate likelihood and control effectiveness).
Audit findings (to track improvement).
In other words: build traceability, the holy grail of mature GRC.
It’s what turns a spreadsheet into a decision engine.
Bonus: The “Smell Test”
If you want to know whether your risk register works, ask yourself:
“When was the last time someone outside the risk team opened it voluntarily?”
If the answer is “never,” you don’t have a register, you have a compliance artifact.
The Point
Risk registers fail because they’re written for auditors, not for decision-makers.
The fix isn’t another template, it’s changing how you think about risk: as a living narrative of how your organization protects its value.
By 2026, the best companies won’t just have beautiful registers, they’ll have connected, contextualized, continuously updated risk ecosystems.
Until then:
Write risks like stories.
Rate them like business cases.
Review them like you mean it.
Want to Go Deeper?
That’s exactly what we teach in the Risk Manager programs at Cyber Academy.
We go beyond heatmaps, into real-world risk decision frameworks that make your board listen.
Because risk isn’t a spreadsheet.
It’s the story of your organization’s survival, told in data.
