What is Residual Risk? Definition & Compliance | UpGuard

This article explains residual risk in cybersecurity, why it matters for compliance (ISO/IEC 27001 and the U.S. Cybersecurity Executive Order), and how to quantify and manage it through a structured process: assess inherent risk via RTOs and impact/likelihood scoring, define acceptable risk thresholds and tolerance, weight mitigating controls (e.g., incident response and recovery testing), and compare control efficacy against the tolerance threshold to determine if residual risk is within acceptable limits, emphasizing continuous monitoring and remediation.