IT Risk Manager Careers
What is an IT Risk Manager?
IT Risk Managers identify possible threats and vulnerabilities to a company’s assets and capital and establish policies and procedures to protect data. IT Risk Managers strive to manage risks that come with ownership and operation of information technology.
Companies are taking IT security threats seriously and are embracing risk management strategies to protect their digital property. IT Risk is a product of asset value, the system’s vulnerability, and the threat to the organization. IT Risk Managers must balance economic and operational costs by using protective measures to guard the data and information systems that support a company’s operations. Threats stem from a variety of sources, including financial uncertainty, management errors, legal liabilities, accidents, and natural disasters.
What is an IT Risk Manager Responsible For?
IT Risk Management encompasses all the steps involved in identifying and reducing risk to the organization’s digital property. An IT Risk Manager identifies company assets, assigns value to the assets, identifies the vulnerability of each asset, and calculates the risk for the assets. Once these steps are complete, the IT Risk Management team determines the necessary countermeasures to reduce the calculated risks, analyze the cost and benefit measures, and report to senior management.
IT Risk Managers can expect to work at any of the following tasks:
- · Designing and implementing overall risk management
- · Establishing company risk standards
- · Performing risk assessments
- · Performing risk evaluation
- · Evaluating and eliminating specific threats
- · Managing high priority risks
- · Providing industry-related security benchmarks
- · Creating specialized plans for sensitive data protection
- · Providing mobile security assessment and strategy
- · Creating security crisis and response policies and procedures
- · Preparing risk management budgets
- · Explaining risk management strategy to staff at all levels
- · Preparing business continuity plans
- · Conducting policy and compliance audits
- · Maintaining all risk management records
- · Reviewing all company contracts and internal business proposals
To be successful in IT Risk Management, prospects will need to develop the following skills:
- Industry and Market Knowledge. IT Risk Managers must understand the industry they work in and risks and threats specific to the industry’s digital data. They must rank, score, and group the potential risks to their firm at any given time and must therefore understand corporate governance, enterprise risk management, information and security risk, and operational and technology risk.
- Strong Communication and Presentation Skills. IT Risk Managers must be able to convey complex technical and risk management concepts to less technical audiences, including front office and senior management staff.
- Strategic Thinking Skills. IT Risk Managers must be forward-thinkers with the ability to understand potential risks to a company both at the departmental level and the company as a whole. They must deliver solutions that align with the business’ objectives while obeying risk safeguards.
Where Does an IT Risk Manager Work?
IT Risk Management jobs can be found in any company that wants to protect its digital property and stay compliant with government standards in their industry. Government, retail, financial, insurance, and medical fields all require risk management solutions.
What Other Career Options are Available to an IT Risk Manager?
Careers available to an IT Risk Manager include:
IT Security & Risk
IT Risk Managers in Security & Risk lead the implementation of the information security programs for their company. They create an action plan and score it from a technical point of view and provide advice, capability, governance, oversight, and risk management to ensure that IT Risk Management policy and procedures are complied with.
Threat Intelligence Analyst
IT Risk Managers working as Threat Intelligence Analysts design and develop programs that support intelligence collection or curation activities and build solutions to pinpoint and mitigate information security threats. They work to solve complex security problems, identifying and assessing internal and external cybersecurity risks that threaten the integrity of a company’s digital data.
Risk Management Consultant
IT Risk Management professionals working as Consultants are experts hired to solve specific problems. They’re usually hired on a project or retainer basis and work to provide actionable plans for digital loss prevention and project advice. They review clients’ IT security environments to determine risk percentage and provide accountability, responsibility, audit assistance, and policy and procedure advice as well as training for staff in IT security issues.
Information Risk Management Professional
IT Risk Managers who work as Information Risk Management Professionals provide information security and assurance with endpoint security technologies to determine the status of security issues. IT Risk Managers utilize packet analyzers and investigate logs. They also troubleshoot and understand exploits and vulnerabilities. They determine malicious and innocuous traffic through triage, investigation, and remediation processes and establish policies and procedures and training for staff and management.
What Degree is Required to Become an IT Risk Manager? What Do They Study?
IT Risk Managers typically pursue a bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology, IT project management, database management systems, IT security, programming, or principles of project management. Business management, communications, and engineering also provide a broad background for those interested in pursuing a position as an IT Project Manager.
IT Risk Managers can also pursue certifications for skills such as project management concepts, leadership, IT strategy and operations, computer systems analysis, software management, and effective communications.
A master’s degree is not a typical requirement for IT Risk Management, but those interested in pursuing a graduate degree can look to business administration or an MBA with a technology concentration. A master’s degree with a non-business or management focus can be useful if the project management focus requires strong technical expertise, such as a Master of Computer Science or a Master of Software Engineering.
How Much Money Does an IT Risk Manager Earn?
People with IT Risk Manager jobs can earn an average annual salary of $84,000. Specialization as an Information Security Director can earn someone about $174,000 per year, while Computer Forensics Investigators earn an average salary of $88,000 per year. Network Security Engineers earn approximately $109,000 per year.
Executive level IT Risk Managers, such as Director of Information Security, earn about $134,000 per year. A Security Solutions Architect can earn, on average, an annual salary of $150,000. SAP Security Administrators earn approximately $115,000 per year.
As with most positions in the field of IT Risk Management, actual annual salary varies, depending on location, experience, and size of organization.
