Assessing likelihood and impact

1. Regulatory Concept & Core Standards

This video's topic is assessing likelihood and impact. By the end, you should be able to assign risk levels using consistent, reasoned criteria. We will connect the information available, the criterion guiding the decision and the action that must be recorded. Follow the case and compare your answer with the proposed response. A risk matrix must reflect the entity's actual activities. This course presents the risk plan as a management tool, not a universal national obligation. The scales and measures are teaching examples to be aligned with rules applicable to the sector and organisation.

A proposed scale can help prioritise risks when its criteria are clear. Likelihood and consequence are separate dimensions. Assessments depend on available information and are not precise statistical predictions. A high score does not prove a breach, and a low score does not remove a legal duty. Distinguish risk before and after assessing existing controls; a merely planned measure does not reduce current risk.

Apply the following rule: Section 11 permits a third party or a group employer to perform the internal function under the statutory safeguards; the employer remains responsible. Resource sharing under section 14 for private employers with 50–249 employees concerns receipt and investigations. Ministry guidance distinguishes this from each workplace’s responsibility for feedback and addressing the breach. Section 27 requires at least annual public activity information from authorities and other entities subject to the public-access regime, not from every private company. Datatilsynet’s reporting scheme and its data-protection complaints procedure have different purposes.

2. Practical Implementation & Procedure

Adopt an understandable scale and explain criteria. This exercise uses three levels only as an example. Examine exposure, opportunities and existing controls. Record reasons and uncertainties. Compare similar processes. No known incidents does not mean zero likelihood, particularly where detection is weak. Before moving on, turn this procedure into a sequence you could explain to a colleague. Identify the first check, the action that depends on its outcome and the record that allows the decision to be reconstructed. Follow the sequence on screen and identify the point where an error would change the result.

3. Case Study & Compliance Action

A department rates favouritism risk low because it has received no reports. Yet no independent review or channel communication exists. The team revises its reasoning. Few reports may reflect poor detection rather than absence of risk. Now read the case carefully. Separate established facts from information you would still need to confirm. Do not add motives or events that have not been described. This distinction matters when choosing a response proportionate to the information available.

The exercise is as follows: Can an unimplemented measure justify reducing the current risk rating? Choose an answer and write one sentence explaining it. During the pause, compare your choice with the criteria we have just considered. Also think about the material you would retain to explain the decision later.

It should not be treated as an effective existing control. It can support a clearly identified forecast of future risk. Current assessment must reflect existing measures and evidence of their operation.

One mistake to avoid is: assigning numbers without criteria or presenting the teaching matrix as a legal requirement.

Now apply the national rule to a second decision. The team presents every integrity instrument as mandatory in every country. How should the message be revised?

Distinguish what national law actually requires, the conditions for its application to the entity and the proposed good practices. The specific rule just examined must appear in the corresponding procedure. Each duty needs a source; each management choice needs a purpose, an owner and evidence of implementation.