This is the risk that the firm or organization is impacted or suffers loss from the inability of an organization to conduct its business operations or other business activities as normally planned or budgeted as a result of failure of one or more of the components of its IT systems, processes and infrastructure. This can be short, medium or long term disruptions or failures.

IT Risk can also arise in the implementation, development or upgrading of new systems and processes. If these are materially significant projects or upgrades they should be classified as Major Project Risk.