In this star-mapping episode of Risk Is Our Business, Captain Michael Rasmussen beams aboard Tony Martin-Vegue, risk consultant, advisor, and author of the upcoming book Heatmaps to Histograms: A Practical Guide to Cyber Risk Quantification. With 25 years navigating the galaxy of cyber risk, Tony has guided enterprises from the gravitational pull of checklists and color-coded charts into the warp lanes of defensible, quantitative analysis.

Their journey begins with the dark matter of bad risk management: programs designed to placate auditors, check boxes, or reassure customers without truly informing decisions. From there, they plot a course toward what good risk management looks like—proactive, integrated, and tied directly to organizational objectives. Tony traces the lineage of risk management back to the late 1600s, when probability theory first emerged, showing how centuries of thinking have led us to today’s crossroads.

The conversation dives into heatmaps, when they can still provide navigational value, and when they collapse under the weight of oversimplification. From there, they move to the promise of histograms, simulations, and CRQ models that help businesses not only understand thresholds and acceptable levels of risk, but also chart their path with clarity and confidence.

For CISOs, CROs, and risk leaders, this episode is both history lesson and star chart, a reminder that risk management isn’t about artifacts to prove you exist, but about enabling the mission. If your current program is orbiting in circles, this is the transmission that will help you break free, align your coordinates, and accelerate to warp speed.