Help with RiskOS

If you have a backup, yes. Restoring brings the register back as it stood when the backup was taken — it replaces what is there now rather than merging into it, and it tells you exactly that and asks you to confirm before it does anything. A backup written by a newer version of RiskOS is refused rather than partially read. If there is no backup, there is nothing for anyone to retrieve, because the register exists in one place only, which is why a backup reminder is worth switching on. See backing up a register and restoring from a backup.

Take a backup on the old Mac, carry the file across however you normally move files, and restore it on the new one. Everything travels with it: risks and their full assessment history and audit trail, controls, actions, assets, vendors, frameworks, indicators, events, your methodology and appetite settings, saved filters, column arrangements, profiles and report branding. Install RiskOS from the Mac App Store on the new Mac and restore your purchases there first, so any profile tiers you own are recognised. The walkthrough is moving a risk register to a new Mac.

Residual risk is calculated, never typed. It comes from the inherent score and the recorded effectiveness of the controls actually linked to that risk — so a control that exists in the register but is not linked to the risk changes nothing, and a linked control left unrated carries no weight. It is also worth checking whether your methodology has controls reducing likelihood, impact or both, because that single setting changes every residual score at once. Start with how residual risk is calculated, then recording control effectiveness.

An import reads only the file you pick, and it never takes a score on trust: every score is recalculated from the likelihood and impact values in the file, using your own scales and bands. A column of pre-computed numbers is therefore ignored rather than honoured, which is usually the surprise. If rows landed under the wrong categories or owners, the column mapping is the place to look. See importing risks from CSV, importing controls from CSV or importing a control framework.

Branding is a setting, not something re-entered for each report. Fill in your business name, tagline, address, phone, email, website and registration or VAT line once, add a logo you supply, and every branded PDF, self-contained HTML, Excel or printed report carries it. If you report for clients, each profile holds its own branding, so switching profiles switches the letterhead with it. See adding your logo to a risk report and setting a client logo.

Restore your purchases first. The App Store holds the record of what you own, and a fresh install or a new Mac needs that record fetched before the higher cap applies. The effective limit is always the highest tier you own — Small Business, Enterprise or Consultant — and owning more than one is harmless and never lowers the cap. Because Apple’s one-time purchases carry no discounted upgrade, moving from a tier you already own to a higher one is paid at the higher tier’s full price. Family Sharing is switched off for all three, so a tier applies to the account that bought it. Profiles above a cap are locked, never deleted. See managing risk for multiple clients.

Apple is the merchant of record for RiskOS and for every in-app purchase, so all billing, receipts, refunds and cancellations are handled by Apple under Apple’s own terms. We never receive your payment details and cannot issue a refund ourselves — please request one through Apple’s usual route for reporting a problem with a purchase. There are no subscriptions and nothing renews, so there is never anything to cancel: the app is a one-time purchase, and the three profile tiers are one-time purchases too.

No. There is no account, no sign-in, no email address and no licence key, and no servers of ours for anything to reach. No analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no advertising, no profiling, no tracking of any kind and no sync. For Apple’s App Privacy framework RiskOS declares “Data Not Collected” in every category, and the bundled privacy manifest declares that the app does not track. The only network use is Apple’s own App Store, for purchases and restoring them; Apple never receives your register. Exports and backups are written only where you choose to save them. See keeping a risk register private.

macOS 14.0 or later. RiskOS is sold only on the Mac App Store, which tells you before you buy whether your Mac qualifies, and updates arrive the same way. There is no separate download, no licence key to keep safe and no activation step — install it, open it, and the register is ready to take its first risk. If you are starting from nothing, creating a risk register covers the first twenty minutes.

Email riskos@mahtca.com. Because there is no telemetry and no crash reporting anywhere in the app, we see nothing at all unless you tell us, so detail is worth more here than usual: what you were doing, what happened, what you expected instead, your macOS version, and whether it happens every time. If a report or an export is involved, say which format. Please do not send us your register — we do not need it, and we would rather you kept it to yourself. We answer in English.