# Risk Assessment

The process of identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing potential security threats and their likely impact.

A **risk assessment[↗](/risk-assessment)** is the structured process of identifying potential security threats, analyzing how likely they are to occur and how much damage they could cause, and then prioritizing which ones deserve attention first. It turns a vague sense of "we should be more secure" into a concrete list of specific risks ranked by real impact.

A good risk assessment looks at three things together: the threat (what could go wrong), the vulnerability[↗](/vulnerability) (how exposed you actually are to it), and the impact (what it would cost if it happened). Because no organization has unlimited time or budget, risk assessments are what let security teams focus their limited resources on the issues that matter most, rather than trying to fix everything at once.