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ISO/IEC 23894
Also known as: ISO 23894
International guidance, published in 2023, on managing risk related to AI. It applies the general risk management principles of ISO 31000 to AI and adds what is specific to AI systems.
- ISO
- risk management
- ISO 31000
- standards
- AIMS
What it covers
The ISO 31000 risk management process (establishing context, identifying, analysing, evaluating and treating risk, then monitoring and reporting) with AI-specific additions: sources of risk such as data quality, lack of transparency, level of automation and system complexity, and how risk changes across the AI lifecycle.
How it fits
ISO/IEC 42001 requires an AI risk assessment (Clause 6.1.2), and 23894 describes how to do one. It is guidance, not certifiable. The NIST AI RMF covers similar ground, and many organisations map the two to each other and to ISO/IEC 42001.
Where it sits in the register
A risk process that exists on paper but is not applied to each system is the AI system lifecycle controls gap; the AI ownership and accountability framework gives each system a risk owner.
Sources
Related Terms
ISO/IEC 42001
The international standard for an AI management system (AIMS): the policies, roles, risk assessment, impact assessment, controls and evidence an organisation puts around its development and use of AI so that the whole can be audited and certified. Published December 2023, and since 2025 surrounded by companion standards for impact assessment (42005) and for the bodies that certify against it (42006), and from 2026 by EN 18286, the European quality management standard written for the EU AI Act.
ISO/IEC 42005
The international standard, published in May 2025, giving guidance on how to carry out an AI system impact assessment: identifying the people and groups a system affects and assessing its potential benefits and harms. It is the method ISO/IEC 42001 assumes.
NIST AI Risk Management Framework
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology's voluntary framework for managing AI risk, built around four functions: Govern, Map, Measure and Manage. Version 1.0 was published in January 2023 and is being revised under the US government's July 2025 AI Action Plan. Since 1.0 NIST has added a Generative AI Profile, an adversarial machine learning taxonomy, a draft Cybersecurity Framework profile for AI, and work on control overlays and AI agent standards. None of it is mandatory, and most of it is used as a common vocabulary rather than a checklist.
Risk Appetite
The level and types of risk an organisation is willing to accept in pursuit of its strategic objectives. Applied to AI, a single organisational posture is rarely enough: appetite has to be set separately across distinct risk dimensions and tiers of decision consequence.