EBIOS RM: understanding cyber risk analysis

EBIOS Risk Manager (EBIOS RM) is a French cyber risk analysis and management method, developed under the guidance of ANSSI and maintained by Club EBIOS. Its distinguishing feature is starting from business stakes and the value to protect, rather than from a list of technical vulnerabilities.

The method unfolds across five workshops. The first frames the context: missions, business values and the supporting assets that need protecting, alongside the security baseline already in place. This step anchors the whole analysis in the organisation's real business reality, not a purely technical lens.

Subsequent workshops explore risk sources and their objectives, then build strategic scenarios — plausible, high-level attack paths — before breaking them down into detailed operational scenarios that describe technically how an attacker could actually proceed.

The final workshop brings it all together into a risk treatment plan: security measures to implement, residual risks knowingly accepted, and ongoing governance to track it all over time. EBIOS RM does not stop at identifying risk — it goes all the way to the treatment decision.

This approach offers a double advantage: it is recognised by French and European authorities and frameworks (NIS2 included), and it produces results that leadership can act on directly, since every risk scenario is explicitly tied back to a business stake.

For an organisation new to cyber risk management, EBIOS RM offers a structured framework without being a rigid straitjacket — the method scales from an SME to a large industrial group.