significant risk
163606·updated Sep 1, 2026A classification or threshold judgment applied during risk assessment that identifies a risk whose combination of likelihood and potential impact — including harm to individuals (financial, reputational, physical, or rights-related), to organizational operations, or to both — is severe enough to compel a mandatory response: escalated controls, a formal impact assessment, breach notification, or cessation of the activity. Risk is commonly calculated as a function of likelihood and impact, and in privacy and security contexts a primary consideration is harm to individuals, not just organizational impact. Under HIPAA/HITECH, for example, the concept is operationalized as a breach that "poses a significant risk of financial, reputational, or other harm to the individual," making the threshold determination a prerequisite for breach-notification obligations. In U.S. state privacy law, the parallel trigger is "significant risk to consumers' privacy," which requires a formal risk assessment before the activity may begin. Across frameworks the expression functions as a gate: risks below the threshold may be accepted or mitigated in the ordinary course, while risks that meet or exceed it tr
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Significant risks associated with individuals are discovered.the sentence this term was read in
generalized from a web lookup of the quoted expression at proposal time Verdict: compositional.
- Privacy Risk Assessment: From Art to Science, By Metrics
- © 2011 Breach Risk of Harm Assessment
- Navigating the Where, When, and What of Data Privacy Risk Assessments | News & Events | Clark Hill PLC
- www.nist.gov
- Significant risk definition
A definition generalized from search results is a draft to react to, not provenance. Confirm it against an authority document before this term is verified.
A web lookup ran when this term was proposed
A judgment-based classification within risk assessment processes that identifies evaluated risks whose combination of likelihood and potential harm to individuals, organizations, or systems crosses a threshold warranting priority attention, mandatory disclosure, or heightened controls. It is distinguished from ordinary risk by its magnitude or severity as assessed against an organization's or regulator's tolerance criteria — for example, under GDPR the equivalent trigger for a Data Protection Impact Assessment is "high risk" to natural persons, while Article 35(3) offers non-exhaustive examples of processing likely to result in high risk, such as systematic automated profiling producing legal or similarly significant effects on individuals. Across frameworks including ISO 27001, NIST 800-53, PCI DSS, and SOC 2, the phrase functions as an ordinary evaluative modifier applied contextually within risk assessment outputs — auditors examine how organizations identify risks, evaluate their likelihood and impact, and prioritize them based on business objectives — rather than as a term of art carrying a single, standardized cross-framework definition.
Advisory only. A term this product ships is defined by an authority document, not by a search result.
Proposed during multiword review of this document in the CKI mapping queue.
Attested in
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- plural
- significant risks
- possessive
- significant risk's
- pluralpossessive
- significant risks'
Framework definitions
- §1 · attested_usage_reviewer_confirmed
- No definition is given in NIST SP 800-171r3. The term is attested in use at 2 citations in that document; a definition is pending curation.Increment 2: attested in NIST SP 800-171r3 without a glossary definition.
- §1 · web_lookup_draft
- A classification or threshold judgment applied during risk assessment that identifies a risk whose combination of likelihood and potential impact — including harm to individuals (financial, reputational, physical, or rights-related), to organizational operations, or to both — is severe enough to compel a mandatory response: escalated controls, a formal impact assessment, breach notification, or cessation of the activity. Risk is commonly calculated as a function of likelihood and impact, and in privacy and security contexts a primary consideration is harm to individuals, not just organizational impact. Under HIPAA/HITECH, for example, the concept is operationalized as a breach that "poses a significant risk of financial, reputational, or other harm to the individual," making the threshold determination a prerequisite for breach-notification obligations. In U.S. state privacy law, the parallel trigger is "significant risk to consumers' privacy," which requires a formal risk assessment before the activity may begin. Across frameworks the expression functions as a gate: risks below the threshold may be accepted or mitigated in the ordinary course, while risks that meet or exceed it trDR-088 backfill from the noun definition column