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Risk method drafting

Use this skill when a company needs a written risk assessment method before it builds or rescores a register, or when the current method produces registers where everything scores 3. Triggers: "write our risk methodology", "define likelihood and impact scales", "what is our risk appetite", "risk acceptance criteria", "who can accept a risk", "our auditor says the method is not repeatable", "risk matrix for our ISMS". Drafts a short method with likelihood and impact anchors in the company's own money, hours and records, a scoring rule, an acceptance threshold with an authority ladder, reassessment triggers, and a calibration test on five sample risks.

RiskISO 27001ISO 27701ISO 42001DORAGeneral

Use this before the first register, or when two people score the same risk three points apart. You get two documents in a new folder, ./risk-method-drafting/: the rulebook your team uses to score risks the same way (risk-method.md), and a record of two people scoring the same risks with it, to show it is repeatable (calibration.md). This skill drafts for a human to review and sign; this skill never marks a control effective. The risk appetite and the acceptance threshold are leadership decisions; the skill proposes, it does not set them.

Inputs to gather

Read first: any existing method or matrix, the current register, the last year's financial size (revenue band, largest customer contract), the contractual uptime and notice commitments, incident records, and any regulator or customer letters. Then ask the reader in one message: what loss in money would change the year's plan, how many hours of outage the biggest customer would tolerate before escalating, how many people's personal data the company holds, and who in leadership signs spending at which level.

Step 1: choose the shape of the assessment

Decide, and write down why, whether risks are identified by scenario (threat, weakness, asset, consequence) or by asset first. Scenario-based suits companies under about 300 people with one product; asset-based suits estates with many systems and owners. State the scope the method covers, the unit of assessment, and that existing controls count toward residual scores only when there is evidence they run. Run a framework lookup for what the framework expects the method to contain; do not guess.

Step 2: anchor the scales in the company's own numbers

Write likelihood 1 to 5 as frequencies the team recognises, with one example from their own history per level where one exists. Write impact 1 to 5 across four to five dimensions, each anchored to a number:

  • Money: direct cost plus revenue at risk, as bands relative to the real figures (for example level 4 starts where the loss exceeds one month of revenue).
  • Operations: hours of outage of the main service, set against what contracts promise.
  • People and data: number of individuals affected and sensitivity; for privacy work, add harm to the individual as its own dimension, scored from the person's side, not the company's.
  • Legal and regulatory: from a warning letter up to a reportable breach or a sanction.
  • Customers and reputation: from one complaint up to losing the largest account.

For AI systems, add a dimension for effects on people affected by the system's outputs. The impact score is the highest dimension, never an average; averaging hides the one that hurts.

Step 3: set the scoring rule and the acceptance ladder

Score = likelihood x impact, 1 to 25. Then propose bands and who may accept what, for example: up to 6 accepted by the risk owner with a note; 8 to 12 accepted by the owner's executive with a review date; 15 and above needs a treatment plan or a recorded leadership decision. Add one override: any risk with impact 5 goes to leadership whatever its likelihood, because a rare company-ending event is not a low risk. Write the result as a short acceptance criteria section: which conditions make a retained risk acceptable, who accepts at which band, and what evidence a retention decision needs. Name the treatment options every register row must choose from (reduce, avoid, share or transfer, retain), with retained risks routed to the acceptance process. For a financial entity under DORA, check that the ladder places final accountability for ICT risk with the management body (Article 5) and that the stated tolerance links to the digital operational resilience strategy.

Step 4: write cadence and triggers

State a full reassessment cadence (typically every 12 months) and the events that force a targeted reassessment: a major incident, a new product line or market, a new critical supplier, a large architecture change, an audit finding on the risk process. Name who runs the reassessment and where results are recorded. Say what happens to existing scores when the method changes: which risks are rescored on adoption and when the rest follow, so old and new scores are never compared as equals. Give the method a version, a date and an approval block for the leadership role that signs it.

Step 5: calibrate before anyone relies on it

Pick five real risks of different kinds. Ask two people to score them independently with the draft method, record both scores in the calibration record (calibration.md), and discuss every gap of more than one level, with the evidence each scorer used. Tighten the anchor that caused the gap; where the gap came from missing evidence rather than a vague anchor, record it as a register quality issue instead of forcing agreement. Repeat until the two scorers land within one level on all five.

What good looks like

  • The first thing a good practitioner checks: could a new hire score a risk with this document alone and land where the risk owner would? Anchors in money, hours and headcount make that possible; words such as "significant" and "moderate" do not.
  • The common mistake is a 5x5 matrix copied from a template, with no link to the company's size. The tell: a risk that would cost a month of revenue scores the same impact as one that costs a day.
  • Acceptance authority matches real spending authority. A method where the security lead accepts every risk is a method nobody above them has read.
  • The calibration file exists and shows scores converging. An auditor who asks "how do you know the method is repeatable" gets a record, not an assurance.

Framework lookups

If ISMS Copilot is connected to your agent (MCP server https://account.ismscopilot.com/v1/account/mcp), ask it the framework question with create_conversation (mode think, answer_format: decision) and keep one conversation for this task. Send only a short question in your own words, show it to the user first, and never include file contents, secrets, personal data or evidence. If it is not connected, check the official text of the framework yourself; this skill does not restate it. Set it up: https://www.ismscopilot.com/mcp?ref=grcskills-risk-method-drafting

Rules

  • MUST anchor every impact level to a number or a record from the reader's own company.
  • MUST run the calibration test on five real risks before the method is presented as final.
  • MUST write outputs only inside ./risk-method-drafting/ and ask before overwriting an existing file.
  • NEVER set the risk appetite or acceptance threshold on leadership's behalf; propose and mark it for their decision.
  • NEVER average impact dimensions into one score.
  • NEVER paste a generic matrix without stating why its bands fit this company.