In a previous rant about the misuse of the term mitigate in the context of risk management I listed the following strategies (I call them MARTA) for managing a given risk:

• Mitigate - Reduce the severity of its impact
• Avoid - Don't do the thing that makes the risk possible
• Reduce - Make the risk less likely to happen
• Transfer - Move the impact of the problem to another party (e.g. insure such as paid insurance or outsource with penalties for failure)
• Accept - Do nothing or set aside budget to cope with the impact

I recently found myself having to explain this and used the analogy of crossing a busy road with fast-moving cars. What's the risk? Well, you might get hit by a car.