3 min read
November 7, 2025
A risk register is more than a spreadsheet of issues, it’s meant to be a living, decision-ready tool that helps organizations identify, prioritize, and act on the risks that matter most. Yet too often, risk registers are treated as compliance artifacts. They get updated for audits, but they don’t influence how leadership makes decisions, allocates resources, or manages threats.
If your risk register feels more like a messy desk drawer than a clear dashboard, it may be holding your program back. Here are five signs your risk register is stuck in the past, and how to bring it into the future.
1. Your Data Lives Only in a Spreadsheet
A basic spreadsheet may work for ini…
3 min read
November 7, 2025
A risk register is more than a spreadsheet of issues, it’s meant to be a living, decision-ready tool that helps organizations identify, prioritize, and act on the risks that matter most. Yet too often, risk registers are treated as compliance artifacts. They get updated for audits, but they don’t influence how leadership makes decisions, allocates resources, or manages threats.
If your risk register feels more like a messy desk drawer than a clear dashboard, it may be holding your program back. Here are five signs your risk register is stuck in the past, and how to bring it into the future.
1. Your Data Lives Only in a Spreadsheet
A basic spreadsheet may work for initial tracking, but it quickly becomes static and cluttered. Without integration across tools and business units, risks stay buried and leaders lack the visibility they need. A modern register consolidates into a single, centralized view inputs such as vulnerability scans, penetration test findings, third-party risk assessments, and policy exceptions.
How to Fix: Design your register to automatically pull from multiple inputs into a single, centralized view so that it reflects real-time conditions, not just snapshots.
2. Your Risk Register Only Gets Updated for Audits
If the only time your risk register is reviewed is during compliance season, it’s not serving its true purpose. Risks evolve constantly, new vulnerabilities emerge, policies break down, and third-party exposures surface unexpectedly. A static register cannot keep pace with today’s shifting threat environment.
**How to Fix: **Treat your register as a living system. Regularly review your risk register feeds from across the enterprise. Ensure there are no new systems, users, or risks that need to be reflected so that you can use it to drive timely, comprehensive remediation, not just check boxes.
3. Risks Aren’t Tied to Business Outcomes
Many registers focus on technical details without connecting them to business impact. That makes it hard for executives to care, or act. A well-structured register aligns cyber risks with strategic priorities, tolerance thresholds, and financial exposure, ensuring leadership understands why a particular risk matters. Learn how to quantify risk,
**How to Fix: **Include fields like residual risk, risk appetite alignment, and financial exposure so the register can inform enterprise risk decisions and funding priorities.
4. There is No Clear Ownership or Accountability
Risks that aren’t assigned an owner often linger unresolved. Without clearly identified roles and responsibilities, remediation stalls, and systematic issues can recur. The most effective registers track not just the risk itself, but the mitigation strategy, control gaps, remediation owner, and target completion date.
**How to Fix: **Build accountability into the register by assigning ownership and tracking progress against clear timelines.
5. Leadership Doesn’t Use Your Risk Register to Make Decisions
Perhaps the clearest red flag: if your executives and risk committees don’t reference the risk register, it’s not doing its job. A modern register provides tailored dashboards for different audiences, detailed remediation records for system owners, project status for managers, and high-level exposure summaries for executives.
**How to Fix: **Structure reporting views by audience so each level of the organization sees the context they need – no more, no less.
Build a Risk Register That Drives You Toward a Secure Future
A risk register should be more than documentation. When thoughtfully designed, it’s a leadership tool that surfaces blind spots, prioritizes remediation, and aligns cybersecurity with enterprise goals.
If your register feels outdated, now is the time to modernize. Start by asking:
- Do we have the right structure?
- Are we feeding in the right data from across the business?
- Do risks have clear owners and timelines?
- Can leadership use this tool to guide decisions today?
By evolving from a static spreadsheet to a strategic enabler, your risk register can help your organization stay resilient, accountable, and ready for whatever comes next.
Learn how to use your risk register to its full potential.
Will Klotz
Senior Security Consultant, Risk, GuidePoint Security
Will Klotz is a Senior Security Consultant with over a decade of experience building and leading cybersecurity and risk management programs across a range of industries, including banking, fintech, federal, insurance, healthcare, and software. Since entering the security field in 2010, Will has developed and implemented enterprise-wide frameworks for information security, third-party risk, policy exception handling, and AI risk governance.
He has hands-on experience with a wide array of technologies, ranging from firewalls and endpoint detection to SIEMs and email security, and has delivered risk and compliance initiatives across global organizations. Will’s work spans major regulatory and industry frameworks including PCI DSS, HITRUST, GDPR, NIST, ISO, SOC 2, SOX, and FDIC guidelines.
Will holds an MBA and is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), and FAIR-certified risk analyst, among other credentials. He is passionate about translating complex security and regulatory challenges into clear, actionable strategies that drive business value.