How SHIRPA Works

  • SHIRPA works by addressing the conditions that shape organizational behavior, not by prescribing specific tools or controls.

    Each SHIRPA domain represents a critical dimension of alignment:

    • How risk is perceived

    • How work is executed

    • How decisions are informed

    • How the organization responds when risk exceeds tolerance

    When these conditions are aligned, organizations operate with clarity and confidence. When they are not, friction, workarounds, and drift emerge—often unnoticed until failure occurs.

  • The SHIRPA principles are interdependent, not linear.

    • Shared perceptions of security underpins stable risk management

    • Strong workflow and technology hygiene enables greater transformation velocity

    • High quality information enables high quality decisions

    • Enterprise Cyber Risk Governance links business commitments to operational capability.

    SHIRPA treats governance as a living system, where each domain continuously influences the others.

  • SHIRPA deliberately avoids framing governance as a checklist or maturity ladder.

    Instead, it focuses on:

    • Trust over enforcement

    • Clarity over activity

    • Evidence over assumption

    • Alignment over compliance

    Controls, metrics, and tools matter—but only when they reinforce the defined conditions for success.

Understanding SHIRPA 2.2

The SHIRPA Framework is designed as an interconnected system, not a checklist. To help explain how its five domains work together in practice, this short discussion walks through SHIRPA 2.2 using real-world security and resilience examples.

The conversation explores how organizational commitments shape controls, how capabilities are built and validated, and how the Conversion domain ensures insights lead to meaningful change. Together, the domains form a lattice that supports continuous improvement, adaptability, and business-aligned cyber resilience.