How to Establish a Best-In-Class Risk Monitoring Process

A risk monitoring process is essential for global enterprises and government entities in their quest to safeguard their organizations from external threats.

Reputational risks are seemingly everywhere in our current digital landscape. The ability to identify and anticipate potential controversies can be a differentiator for your organization. A hyper-connected world that’s more aware of global events than ever before makes this difficult.

A quick scan of any major news outlet will reveal how geopolitical conflicts, emerging narratives, and social media groundswells can put brands in the crosshairs:

• Organized Activism: Activist Robby Starbuck and others have used customer sentiment to pressure companies such as John Deere, Tractor Supply Company, and Harley Davidson to peel back DEI initiatives.
• Customer Backlash: Small changes to Adobe’s terms of service sparked a massive backlash from creators wary of using their data to train generative AI models.
• Damaging Boycotts: McDonald's missed a key sales target, partially due to some customers boycotting the fast food chain for its perceived support of Israel.

A strong risk monitoring process can help keep your organization’s name out of the wrong headlines and angry posts. It also provides the foundation for unified intelligence across an organization. Let’s discuss the importance of risk monitoring and reporting, and identify some risk monitoring tools and techniques to help your team:

What is the risk monitoring process?

The risk monitoring process is a continuous effort by organizations to identify, analyze, and prioritize potential threats to their reputation, operations, and personnel. For corporate communications and risk intelligence professionals, the right risk monitoring tools and techniques can help teams more quickly and adequately respond to threats before they cause reputational damage.

Risk monitoring is an important element of corporate intelligence, which centers on using data and online sentiments to guide high-level decision-making within an organization. When organizations are aligned cross-functionally with the same intelligence, they can make faster decisions and stay in lock-step.

This process is vital across many industries and organization types, including:

• Software: Any company that relies on its software platform for service delivery can be impacted by breaches, cyberattacks, and data privacy concerns.
• Finance: Banks and financial institutions work tirelessly to stay on top of market fluctuations, regulatory changes, fraud, and other threats. 
• Consumer Goods & Retail: From changing consumer preferences to supply chain disruptions and social media controversies, retail brands face threats from many angles.
• Healthcare: Hospitals and pharmaceutical companies must stay informed about drug recalls, emerging illnesses, and potential misinformation campaigns.
• Government: Risk monitoring tools and techniques can enhance geopolitical risk intelligence efforts.

Proactively monitoring risks allows organizations to anticipate challenges and enact effective mitigation strategies.

What are some effective risk monitoring tools and techniques?

Constructing a risk monitoring process involves combining software with human-led strategies. Here are a few examples of each:

Software tools

• Narrative Intelligence Solutions: Narrative intelligence is how organizations detect, decipher, and defend against reputational threats. PeakMetrics offers an AI-powered narrative intelligence solution trusted by top brands and enterprises.
• Media Monitoring: Meltwater and Cision are two examples of platforms that scan traditional and online media reports for relevant news stories and mentions of your company.
• Geopolitical Risk Intelligence: Services such as Stratfor offer insights into potential political instability, social unrest, and other region-specific threats
• Data Visualization: Platforms such as Tableau and PowerBI help transform disparate data into more actionable insights.

Strategies and techniques

• Social Media Monitoring: Tracking public sentiment and discourse on social platforms is essential. Think beyond the typical platforms (Instagram, Reddit, X) and dig deeper into fringe platforms such as Telegram, Quora, VK, and Weibo. This is where risks emerge. 
• Competitive Analysis: Tracking competitor updates – from their product to their business ops — helps your organization adjust to emerging market trends.
• Routine Reporting: Don’t forget about the “reporting” aspect of risk monitoring and reporting. Executives are busy, but they must stay informed about the risks at play. Regularly producing executive-level reports will help your C-Suite stay on track.
• Scenario Planning: The best comms and risk analysis teams are proactive, not reactive. Preparing your protocols for future events will help you stay ready when risks arise.

These are just a few ingredients of a comprehensive risk-monitoring process.

What are the steps in monitoring risk?

The five steps in monitoring risk are:

1. Define your risk landscape
2. Establish monitoring infrastructure
3. Analyze and prioritize risks
4. Develop mitigation strategies
5. Communicate cross-functionally

1. Define your risk landscape

The risk monitoring process begins by looking externally. It’s often helpful to categorize the threats that are most relevant to your organization. Consider industry trends, geopolitical factors, and historical crises that tie back to your business.

2. Establish monitoring infrastructure

There’s a lot of content to monitor in the digital landscape. Decide which software and tools you’ll use to help you stay on top of online conversations, media reports, and any other relevant data sources. Communicate ownership over major monitoring tasks.

3. Analyze and prioritize risks

Gathering data is only part of the equation. You must also dig deeper into emerging stories to asses their significance and potential. PeakMetrics uses AI-enabled “threat scoring” to help identify which risks deserve the most attention from your team.

4. Develop mitigation strategies

Formulate plans that correspond to each of your risk categories. Establish protocols and templates so you can be ready with the right takedown notice, talking points, or public-facing statement when issues arise.

5. Communicate cross-functionally

Risk monitoring and reporting are only useful if it helps align your organization. Stakeholder communication is the final piece of the puzzle — and an essential one. Ensure that executives are regularly briefed with data-backed reports. Keep employees from other relevant departments (data analytics, cybersecurity, PR) informed on emerging risks.

How PeakMetrics can empower your risk monitoring and reporting strategy

PeakMetrics helps take your risk monitoring process to the next level. Our narrative intelligence solution seamlessly integrates with your existing data pipeline. Using proprietary narrative ML, PeakMetrics helps leading organizations transform chaotic mentions into actionable response plans and executive-ready reports. With the ability to monitor fringe platforms, PeakMetrics enables you to uncover the origin of misinformation and disinformation, giving you an early edge in detecting and combating emerging threats.

PeakMetrics is designed to augment your corporate comms and risk intelligence at every step of the process, from eliminating manual data processing delays to capitalizing on trends before they slip away.

Request a demo to learn how PeakMetrics can provide the risk monitoring tools and techniques you need to protect your organization.