Information Risk Has a Measurement Problem
Enterprises have invested heavily in cybersecurity, GRC programs, security ratings, and third-party risk management. Yet despite those investments, a fundamental business question remains unanswered: how much information risk does the organization truly face, and what could that exposure mean financially?
That gap represents one of the next major challenges for the information risk market: moving from collecting evidence about risk to consistently measuring the risk itself.
As organizations collect increasing volumes of security, compliance, and assurance evidence, the challenge is no longer obtaining information. It's determining what it means for information risk and residual risk. These inputs are difficult to interpret consistently and even harder to translate into comparable measures of residual information risk.
Financial markets rely on standardized measures to compare credit risk, evaluate exposure, and support consequential financial decisions. For example, the FICO score has been around for decades. Information risk has lacked an equivalent measurement system
The Measurement Gap Limits Informed Third-Party Risk Decisions
Without a common basis for comparison, security leaders, finance teams, executives, and boards still struggle to answer a shared set of questions about third-party risk:
The absence of a common, explainable way to translate diverse security evidence into meaningful measures of third-party residual information risk and potential financial exposure creates a fundamental gap in how organizations understand and govern information risk. Without that foundation, governance and consequential decisions depend too often on fragmented evidence, inconsistent methodologies, and subjective interpretation.
Introducing IRIDX: From Evidence to Risk Measurement
IRIDX introduces a consistent, explainable approach to measuring residual information risk and estimating related financial exposure using the assurance evidence organizations already has to improve third-party risk management and governance.
IRIDX is not another assessment, certification, or questionnaire. It addresses the problem too many disparate and diverse artifacts creates: measurement.
IRIDX establishes a common measurement foundation for comparing risk, prioritizing action, and informing financial decisions. By evaluating existing assurance and risk evidence for relevance, rigor, and reliability, IRIDX produces standardized and explainable measures of residual information risk and related financial exposure.
The opportunity is to make information risk more measurable and comparable across the enterprise, creating a common foundation that security, risk, finance, executive leadership, and boards can use to make decisions.
IRIDX helps organizations make more informed and consequential decisions across three critical areas:
IRIDX and HITRUST: Distinct and Complementary Roles
IRIDX is a separate company under common ownership with HITRUST. HITRUST provides frameworks and independently validated cybersecurity assurance; IRIDX focuses on information risk ratings, residual-risk measurement, and financial exposure modeling.
IRIDX builds on nearly two decades of experience in cyber threat analysis, control development, and assurance methodologies. It develops and governs its methodologies under its own governance framework, separate from HITRUST's assurance and certification programs.
The Evolution of TPRM Begins Today
For too long, organizations have had more security evidence than they could consistently translate into business-relevant measures of risk. The next evolution of third-party risk management is not simply collecting more evidence. It is getting more value from the evidence organizations already have. By connecting assurance evidence to residual-risk measurement, financial exposure modeling, and governance, IRIDX opens new possibilities for how organizations understand, compare, reduce, retain, and transfer information risk.
The implications extend beyond TPRM. A consistent approach to measuring information risk creates the potential for a shared language across cybersecurity, enterprise risk, finance, executive leadership, boards, and ultimately other participants that need to understand information risk in business terms.
This is the beginning of a larger ambition: a common language for information risk that can support better cybersecurity, stronger governance, and more informed risk decisions.
To learn more, read the press release and visit IRIDX.com.