In the previous step you worked to produce a map of the risks your agency faces.

Now, the mission is to reduce the risk level for each one, by reducing the likelihood of it happening, reducing the vulnerability of your agency, and preparing to reduce the impact if it does happen.

In this page, we'll focus on how you and your leadership team can work on reducing the likelihood of potential risks happening.

Acceptance and focus

First, it's important to acknowledge that there are some risks for which you won't be able to have any impact on the likelihood. Lockdowns, recessions, and more will all happen if they're going to happen. So all we can do is accept that, and move on to reducing our vulnerability and the impact.

But there are risks where identifying that we have no opportunity to reduce the likelihood might be a sign that we've not drilled down into them enough. For each one, ask if there is a way to be able to focus on a risk that is closer to the agency.

To do this, revisit the 'distill' section on the Recognising Risk page, and work on 'unwrapping' risks until you find the underlying risks that are closer to the agency.

But otherwise, focus your energies in this step on reducing the likelihood only for the risks where you have that level of control.

How to identify ways to reduce likelihood

For each risk, consider the ways in which it might occur.

For an example, let's imagine you have identified that 'Loss of important data' is a risk for you, and brainstorm the ways that might happen: