Conclusion These risk management activities at JPL that address both institutional and project life cycles have shown that formalizing the process is highly effective and beneficial to both. Effective risk management must be a proactive and persistent activity that involves the organization at both the institutional and the project levels. It requires the cooperation of everyone in the organization. An SSE can manage security risks by working with domain experts and management to identify the risks and their mitigations. Use of a risk management tool can help provide objective control of the risk elements and their interactions both institutionally and in the SDLC. While the institutional risk mitigation processes may benefit the life cycle, they must be carefully weighed and balanced against other risks and the potential impact of the mitigations, especially in the interface with the project life cycle. Institutional risk abatement activities for the enterprise provide mitigations for the project life cycle and should be accounted for as part of the risk assessment and mitigation analysis process. Further, Integrating risk mitigations provided by the institution into the project life cycle helps to identify risks that may already be costed independently. The projects may rely on institutional mitigation for risks identified in its own processes which could reduce its overall security risk mitigation costs while providing higher security as well. Consequently, some of the mitigations, even though more costly when provisioned independently, may actually be cheaper as the costs are shared across the organization and are already factored into the project costs for institutional support. For this additional reason, it is more cost effective to implement an institutional risk assessment and mitigation program as described above. Spreading the cost of providing risk mitigation across projects actually reduces the cost for each project of providing its own support and tools independently. Applying a risk management process to IT security is a critical activity to prevent loss or compromise of CIA. An overall architecture to manage IT security risk enables organizations to understand these risks better, including the likelihood of success, the potential for damage if successful, the effectiveness and cost of mitigations. It gives managers the capability to make informed decisions on mitigating risk and accepting residual risk, along with the associated costs. Such a methodology applied as a systems engineering practice both institutionally and in the SDLC at the project level enables the organization to respond quickly and more effectively to new threats as the environment and technology change over time. For both the institution and projects performing risk assessment as part of an IT security plan process helps the organization to understand the security needs of the organization and provide the capability for fill-cost accounting for both the institution and the project. The risk management activities identified above have benefited IPL in its efforts to take proactive and cost effect steps in protecting the organization.