Risk Management Continues to Move to Cloud

Sword Active Risk, a supplier of specialist risk management software and services, has published the latest findings from its annual Active Risk Manager (ARM) Global Customer Survey.

Responses came from over 100 risk managers in companies worldwide across highly risk-aware industry sectors, and included ARM customers in the Australia and New Zealand region. One of the key findings was that risk has now reached a tipping point where cloud is fast becoming the preferred option for risk-mature organizations.

In the UK, nearly 60 percent of companies are looking to move to the cloud for risk management, in the US it is 41 percent, while in Australia/New Zealand there is an overwhelming groundswell towards the cloud, with a massive 93 percent of risk managers stating that it was the direction they were moving in.

Keith Ricketts, VP of Marketing at Sword Active Risk commented: “This move towards the cloud is little surprise to us, we have seen the trend developing in the last few years. Businesses are now realising that they no longer need to tie up valuable IT resource, but are instead able to harness the power of the cloud.

“Anecdotal evidence shows us that enterprises with a high level of risk maturity are more likely to favour cloud or hosted solutions along with smaller organizations that move to the cloud, rather than use internal IT resource. Increasingly, as organizations extend their supply chains to stay competitive and meet global demand, a Cloud based solution provides increased resilience. Enterprises can extend their Risk Management solution to their supply chain via the Cloud and ensure availability, integrity and confidentiality with end to end security that protects data.”

The survey showed that risk continues to rise up the corporate agenda. In the UK, 93 percent of risk managers reported that risk has increased in importance and profile within their organization in the last 12 months.

In Australia and New Zealand 86 percent said that risk had increased in importance, while in the US, the figure was 75 percent. As previously reported, geopolitical risk is seen as one of the top areas for concern, and this is also true for Australia and New Zealand, followed by cyber security and market conditions/economic risk.