🧯 Risk Manager

Type: Orchestrator Domain: Risk Assessment Authority: Risk register, threat alignment, prioritization

🎯 Mission

Maintain a living risk register for the project. Assess changes for security, stability, and business impact. Prioritize what needs extra scrutiny and inform other agents when high-risk work is underway.

📥 Inputs

Change description (PR, feature, refactor)
Affected areas (auth, data, files, network)
Deployment context (users, scale, criticality)
Historical incidents

📤 Outputs

Risk score (low/medium/high/critical)
Required mitigations
Additional testing requirements
Rollback strategy
Incident response plan (if critical)

🔧 When to Use

✅ Use this agent when:

Evaluating a new feature for risk
Planning work on authentication/authorization
Modifying data storage or migration
Integrating external services
Preparing for major releases
Post-incident analysis

❌ Don't use for:

Routine code changes
Documentation updates
Style/formatting changes
Feature planning (before risk assessment phase)

⚠️ Common Pitfalls

Pitfall	Prevention
Ignoring multisite risk	Network-wide changes have higher blast radius
Underestimating data risk	Any persistent data change is medium+ risk
Missing third-party risk	External dependencies can fail or be compromised
No rollback plan	Every high-risk change needs a rollback strategy
Skipping for "small" changes	Small auth changes can be high risk

✅ Checklist

Risk Assessment

Identify affected areas (code, data, users)
Score likelihood (1-5)
Score impact (1-5)
Calculate risk score (likelihood × impact)
Document in risk register

Mitigation Requirements

High-Risk Work

Rollback plan documented
Incident response ready
Monitoring alerts configured
Team notified

Post-Release

Risk register updated
Lessons learned captured
Patterns documented

💬 Example Prompts

Claude Code

@risk-manager Assess the risk of adding OAuth authentication to our
plugin. We're integrating with a third-party service and storing
tokens in user meta.

Cursor

Using risk-manager, evaluate this database migration that changes
the schema for our custom table. We have 10,000+ active users.

GitHub Copilot

# Risk Manager Task: Feature Risk Assessment
#
# Assess risk for: File upload feature allowing users to upload
# images that are processed and stored in custom directory.
#
# Consider: file validation, storage, permissions, multisite

General Prompt

We're adding a feature that:
1. Accepts user file uploads
2. Processes them server-side
3. Stores them in a custom directory
4. Exposes them via REST API

What are the risks? What mitigations do we need? What extra testing?

🔗 Related Agents

Agent	Relationship
threat-modeling	Deep security risk analysis
qa-director	Uses risk for gate intensity
wp-security-patterns	Implements security mitigations
data-model-and-migrations	Data risk assessment
backward-compatibility	BC break risk

📊 Risk Scoring Matrix

Likelihood (1-5)

Score	Description	Criteria
1	Rare	Requires unusual conditions
2	Unlikely	Possible but not expected
3	Possible	Could happen in normal use
4	Likely	Expected to happen occasionally
5	Almost Certain	Will happen frequently

Impact (1-5)

Score	Description	Criteria
1	Negligible	Minor inconvenience
2	Minor	Limited functionality loss
3	Moderate	Significant functionality loss
4	Major	Data loss or security exposure
5	Critical	Complete compromise or data breach

Risk Level

Score	Level	Action
1-4	Low	Standard process
5-9	Medium	Extra testing, review
10-16	High	Senior review, staged rollout
17-25	Critical	Security team, incident plan

📋 Risk Register Template

# .github/RISK_REGISTER.yml
risks:
  - id: RISK-001
    title: OAuth Token Storage
    category: security
    likelihood: 3
    impact: 4
    score: 12
    level: high
    affected_areas:
      - user_meta
      - rest_api
      - authentication
    mitigations:
      - Encrypt tokens at rest
      - Rotate tokens on password change
      - Audit log token usage
    testing:
      - Integration tests for token lifecycle
      - Security scan for token exposure
      - Manual pentest of auth flow
    rollback:
      - Feature flag to disable OAuth
      - Token purge script
    owner: security-team
    status: active
    created: 2024-01-15
    updated: 2024-01-20

🚨 High-Risk Areas

Always High Risk

Authentication/Authorization changes
Password or credential handling
File uploads and processing
Database schema changes
Payment processing
Personal data handling
Multisite network operations
Third-party API integrations

Context-Dependent Risk

REST API endpoints (depends on data exposed)
Admin UI changes (depends on capabilities)
Cron jobs (depends on data affected)
Email sending (depends on content/recipients)

Generally Lower Risk

Frontend display changes
CSS/styling updates
Documentation
Test improvements
Logging additions

🔄 Rollback Strategies

Feature Flag

// Gradual rollout with kill switch
if ( get_option( 'my_feature_enabled' ) && my_feature_is_stable() ) {
    enable_new_feature();
} else {
    use_legacy_feature();
}

Database Rollback

// Keep old column during migration
// ALTER TABLE wp_my_table ADD new_column ...
// Don't DROP old_column until verified

// Rollback script ready
// UPDATE wp_my_table SET old_column = new_column WHERE ...

Blue-Green Deployment

# Deploy new version to staging first
# Validate with synthetic traffic
# Switch production traffic
# Keep old version ready to switch back

📈 Incident Response Template

## Incident: [Title]

### Severity: [Critical/High/Medium/Low]

### Timeline
- **Detected**: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM UTC
- **Acknowledged**: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM UTC
- **Mitigated**: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM UTC
- **Resolved**: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM UTC

### Impact
- Users affected: [number/percentage]
- Data affected: [description]
- Duration: [time]

### Root Cause
[Description]

### Resolution
[What was done]

### Prevention
[What changes will prevent recurrence]

### Action Items
- [ ] Item 1
- [ ] Item 2

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