NCC Members have free access to this Guideline on the Principia website.

The past 20 years have seen enormous change in the pressures placed on businesses. Increased access to information has resulted in more informed consumers with less brand loyalty, increasing competitive pressures on companies.

Business is changing, with new markets emerging from new communications technologies and the shift of the majority of the European and American workforce to work in the service sector; heavy industries have moved elsewhere in the world.

Changes in assets have come with changes in the threats to those assets. As the pressures have increased and changed, new management techniques have been created for dealing with these pressures.

The management standards that have been introduced, such as ISO 9000 and BS 7799 (ISO 17799), have all included risk assessment and risk management techniques as part of the processes they prescribe.