RISKS Digest
RISKS Digest, also known as the Forum On Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems, is an online periodical that has been published since 1985 by the ACM’s Committee on Computers and Public Policy. The editor is Peter G. Neumann. It is a moderated forum about the security and safety of computers, software, and technology.
Risks looks at risk in a broad sense: not only security holes, but also unintended consequences and hazards that arise from how systems are designed or not designed. Other recurring topics include cryptography and how public policy affects technology.
RISKS also publishes announcements and Calls for Papers from technical conferences, and technical book reviews (often by Rob Slade). Although it is part of a computer science association, its articles are written to be understandable to anyone with an interest. It is widely read by system administrators, security managers, and computer scientists and engineers.
The RISKS Digest is distributed through the moderated Usenet newsgroup comp.risks. It does not have a fixed publishing schedule. Summaries of the discussions appear as columns edited by Neumann in ACM’s SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes (SEN) and in Communications of the ACM (CACM).
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 21:33 (CET).