By David Mack, SVP, Business Development, Americas, CLDigital
Every risk manager knows the scene: you’re presenting to leadership, the board, or regulators, and you flash a heatmap with scores from 1–5 or “high/medium/low.” Heads nod politely. Then someone asks: “But what does this really mean for us?”
That’s the problem with risk scoring as it’s practiced today. It simplifies, but it often misleads.
The Comfort and the Illusion of Numbers
Quantifying risk feels like progress. Numbers and colors look objective, especially when compared to narratives or anecdotes. A “4” on likelihood and a “3” on impact combine into a “12,” which slots neatly into red, yellow, or green.
But without context, those scores can be deceptive:
- Relative, not absolute – What’s a “4” in one department might be a “2” in another.
- Static snapshots – Scores freeze risk at a single point in time, ignoring how exposure changes daily.
- False precision – Multiplying two subjective ratings doesn’t create objective truth.
The result is what I call risk theater: the appearance of measurement without the substance of insight.
Why Context Matters
Leaders don’t want numbers for their own sake. They want to know:
- What’s changing in our risk exposure?
- How do these risks connect to the services, assets, and suppliers that matter?
- What would this risk actually mean for our strategy, finances, or reputation?
That’s where context transforms quantification from a false comfort into a decision-making tool.
Three Dimensions of Context That Change Everything
1. Business Service Impact
A “medium” cyber risk doesn’t mean much until you tie it to the business services it affects. If that risk connects to your trading platform, payments infrastructure, or claims processing system, the business impact is very different from the same vulnerability in a sandbox lab.
Context means mapping risks not just to assets, but to the business outcomes those assets support.
2. Dependency Visibility
Risks rarely sit in isolation. A supplier disruption can ripple through multiple services; a compliance gap can cascade into reputational and financial impacts. Without dependency mapping, scores understate interconnected exposure.
Context means seeing how risks compound when dependencies overlap so you’re not blindsided by an outage you thought was contained.
3. Data-Driven Metrics
Risk scores built on gut feel don’t cut it anymore. Organizations need real data inputs from incident frequency, control performance, threat intelligence, supplier SLAs, and financial impact models.
Context means anchoring scores in metrics you can defend, compare, and trend over time.
The Danger of Oversimplification
Competitors in our space sometimes sell “fast-track” quantification: plug in a few numbers, out comes a neat report. The problem? Leadership starts making real business decisions on flawed inputs.
Without context:
- You under-invest in risks that look “low” on paper but are tied to critical dependencies.
- You over-invest in risks that score “high” but have minimal business relevance.
- You mislead boards and regulators by presenting the illusion of precision.
In other words: your risk scores lie.
From Scores to Stories That Drive Action
When quantification is paired with context, it stops being a math exercise and starts being a story leaders can act on. Imagine this instead of a red box on a heatmap:
“If this supplier fails, our claims service is down for 48 hours. That exceeds our tolerance, impacts $18M in daily transactions, and triggers regulatory reporting.”
That’s a story with numbers that matter; financial exposure, operational tolerance, regulatory impact, all in business language.
How CLDigital Helps
At CLDigital, we built our platform to solve this very problem. Risk data doesn’t live in silos, it connects to:
- Incidents, KRIs, and controls that show performance in real time.
- Business services and dependencies that reveal where risks matter most.
- Monte Carlo simulations and financial modeling that translate likelihoods into dollars and outcomes.
The result: a risk view that leaders trust, because it’s quantified, contextualized, and connected.
A Smarter Way Forward
Risk scoring isn’t going away, nor should it. But if you rely on scores without context, you’re not measuring risk. You’re measuring opinion.
To move forward:
- Anchor scores in data, not just perception.
- Map risks to the business services that matter.
- Show compounded exposure through dependencies.
- Translate into financial and operational outcomes.
That’s how you turn a red heatmap into a board conversation that ends with action, not confusion.
Final Thought
Resilience isn’t about colors on a grid. It’s about decisions made under pressure. And decisions require context.
If you suspect your risk scores are lying to you, it’s time to rethink your approach. With the right data, the right connections, and the right platform, you can move from risk theater to real resilience.
