In this return episode of Risk Is Our Business, Captain Michael Rasmussen welcomes Kristina Wiese Tranberg back to the bridge, joined by Karoline Corfitz and Morten Bjerregaard, for a practical deep dive into internal controls and their role in modern GRC.

Building on Kristina’s previous appearance, the conversation shifts from operating models and transformation to a core question of what is the real value of controls? The group explores how organizations can move beyond checkbox compliance toward control optimization that supports business outcomes rather than slowing them down.

They also challenge a common disconnect. Many organizations aim for an enterprise-wide view of risk, but lack an enterprise view of controls. Without understanding how controls operate across processes and functions, can risk truly be understood at scale?

The discussion then examines the relationship between risk owners and control owners, and when they should be the same, when they should be different, and how that choice affects accountability and effectiveness. They also unpack the 1-10-100 rule, illustrating how the cost of fixing issues escalates the later they are detected, and why embedding controls early in processes is critical.

This episode offers a grounded, experience-led perspective on aligning risk, controls, and ownership across the enterprise.

In this episode of Risk Is Our Business, Captain Michael Rasmussen sits down with Michael Erlandsson Jensen at April Coffee in Copenhagen, a busy café whose ambient hum feels oddly right for a conversation grounded in real-world experience.

Michael opens by tracing his path through global risk management, and from there the two find their way into something that doesn't get discussed enough: how differently risk culture actually plays out depending on where you are in the world. The Danish and broader European approach tends to weave risk into everyday business dialogue—collaborative, embedded, almost organic. That's a sharp contrast to the more compliance-first environments Michael has worked in across parts of the Middle East and the U.S., where risk can feel like something done to the business rather than with it.

That tension shapes the heart of the conversation. For Michael, good risk management isn't about control or enforcement, it's about facilitation. Helping the business understand its own risks, take ownership of them, and actually talk about them. Bad risk management, by contrast, is disconnected from decisions that matter, buried in process, and more interested in checking boxes than in being useful.

They also dig into risk appetite a concept that's often treated as a document to file away and forget. Michael pushes back on that, reframing it as something that should reflect how an organization actually behaves, not just what it says on paper. The real work, he argues, is closing the gap between strategy, risk, and what happens on the ground day to day.

It's a grounded, cross-cultural take on GRC and a reminder that the real work of risk doesn't live in frameworks. It lives in conversations.

In this episode of Risk Is Our Business, Captain Michael Rasmussen brings together a cross-functional crew of risk, audit, cyber, and technology leaders for a candid conversation recorded in the Netherlands. Joined by David Ngu, Brett Steinmetz, Jos Bredero, and Eric Groen, the discussion opens with a simple question: what actually keeps you up at 1 a.m. when it comes to risk?

From there, the conversation explores the key drivers shaping risk management in the Netherlands, and how they compare to broader European and U.S. approaches. The group reflects on how Europe tends to lean more toward principles and outcomes-based thinking, while the U.S. often emphasizes rules and compliance and how those differences play out in practice across organizations and industries.

They then turn to the role of professional services firms, unpacking what a successful engagement really looks like. Rather than focusing purely on tooling, the discussion emphasizes the importance of a business-oriented approach, ensuring that technology implementations are grounded in real operational needs, not just frameworks or features.

The episode closes with each guest offering a key takeaway and practical insights drawn from their experience working across risk, controls, cyber, and consulting.

This is a grounded look at how risk is actually managed on the ground (across regions, disciplines, and perspectives) when the frameworks meet reality.

In this return episode of Risk Is Our Business, Captain Michael Rasmussen reconnects with Tony Martin-Vegue for a wide-ranging conversation built around his new book, From Heatmaps to Histograms: A Practical Guide to Cyber Risk Quantification.

At the center of the discussion is a simple but uncomfortable idea: most organizations aren’t really measuring cyber risk, they’re describing it. Heatmaps, scoring models, and qualitative frameworks may look familiar, but they rarely help leaders make better decisions.

Tony breaks down what’s going wrong, and why. Along the way, he uses an unexpected historical example (the Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902) to illustrate how well-intentioned interventions can create worse outcomes when incentives, measurement, and behavior are misaligned.

The conversation moves through the core themes of the book:

• Why cybersecurity often behaves like two separate disciplines under one label
• Why quantitative risk is less about advanced math and more about structured thinking
• The biggest myth about data that keeps organizations stuck in qualitative approaches
• Where methods like Monte Carlo simulation and FAIR fit and where they don’t

They also explore why many cyber risk quantification programs fail, what it takes to make them practical, and how the same principles apply beyond cyber to operational risk more broadly.

At over an hour, this is one of the most in-depth conversations on the show! It's less a summary and more a working session on how to move from risk reporting to decision-making.

In this episode of Risk Is Our Business, Captain Michael Rasmussen connects over a slightly distant comms link (via Teams) with Hakkı Sarp, Enterprise Risk Management leader at QIAGEN, for a conversation on how risk management is being reshaped by today’s fast-moving environment.

They begin by examining the limitations of traditional risk practices, and why approaches built for slower, more predictable conditions are struggling to keep up with the velocity and complexity organizations now face. From there, the discussion turns to AI and separating real value from hype, including identifying where it is genuinely enhancing risk management today versus where expectations may be running ahead of reality.

Hakkı and Michael explore the dual challenge of predicting risks while remaining adaptable, and how organizations must balance short-term financial pressures with longer-term sustainability considerations that don’t always fit neatly into existing frameworks. They also unpack the role of risk culture and what it really means, why it’s so difficult to embed, and how leadership behaviors ultimately determine whether risk is lived or simply documented.

The conversation closes with a simple but powerful perspective on how leaders should approach risk in a world where uncertainty is constant and conditions change faster than frameworks can keep up.

In this return episode of Risk Is Our Business, Captain Michael Rasmussen welcomes back Graeme Keith for a sequel to Wrath of Math, this time shifting from models to meaning.

They take aim at cookie-cutter risk management, unpacking what separates genuine practice from templated frameworks that look good on paper but fail to influence decisions. The conversation centers on Graeme’s recent writing on risk appetite, and his frustration with how often organizations discuss the risks they’re willing to take without addressing the more fundamental question of why are we taking those risks at all?

From there, they explore how risk appetite is often less about numbers and more about culture, intent, and context, and why effective risk management must always be anchored to the decisions it is meant to support. Without that connection, risk becomes descriptive rather than directional.

They also dive into the realities of interconnected risk, the current state of risk technology, and where the discipline may be heading by 2030, including whether tools are helping organizations make better decisions, or simply producing more sophisticated noise.

If Wrath of Math challenged how we quantify risk, this episode challenges how we make sense of it and whether risk management is truly helping us navigate, or just giving us more charts while we drift.

In this episode of Risk Is Our Business, Captain Michael Rasmussen is joined by Karan Rao, Head of Enterprise Risk at Embark Student Corp., for a conversation that started not in a boardroom but on LinkedIn.

A post from Karan caught Michael’s attention on how the best risk managers aren’t the ones with the most complex models, but the ones who can walk into a room, read the people, interrogate the data, and explain risk so clearly that action becomes unavoidable.

From there, the discussion dives into the human side of risk. They explore why understanding behavior is just as important as understanding data, and why the ability to communicate, write, and present with clarity separates those who inform from those who influence. Risk leaders, they argue, don’t hide behind dashboards, they translate insight into decisions.

They also discuss the importance of developing skills that compound over time: communication, storytelling, emotional intelligence, and business understanding. Karan shares how ideas from Atlas of the Heart shape his approach to risk leadership, helping him connect emotion, clarity, and decision-making in high-stakes environments.

This episode is about moving risk from a reporting function to a leadership discipline, one where the ability to engage the room matters just as much as the data on the screen.

In this episode of Risk Is Our Business, Captain Michael Rasmussen welcomes Anne Louise Higgins, Global Head of Cyber Governance, Risk and Control at BNY Mellon, for a conversation about how the risk profession has evolved and who will be leading it into the future.

Anne reflects on the growing role of women in risk management and cybersecurity, and how diversity of experience and perspective strengthens decision-making at every level of the enterprise. From there, the discussion broadens into how the practice of risk management itself has changed over time, from compliance-driven reporting toward more integrated, business-aligned approaches.

They also explore the cultural differences in how risk is approached in the United States versus Europe, and how those perspectives shape governance, accountability, and engagement with leadership. The conversation then turns to risk technology, what currently stands out in the market, and how emerging capabilities are reshaping the way organizations understand and manage uncertainty.

Michael and Anne also discuss the future of careers in risk, cyber, and GRC, particularly in an era increasingly shaped by AI and rapid technological change. The episode closes with practical insights on how professionals can future-proof their careers and build the skills, adaptability, and strategic mindset needed to stay relevant on the bridge as the risk landscape continues to evolve.