What does the lack of adequate security controls represent?

Vulnerability.

The lack of adequate security controls represents a vulnerability, exposing sensitive information and data to the risk of malicious damage, attack or unauthorized access by hackers, resulting in loss of sensitive information, which could lead to the loss of goodwill for the organization. A succinct definition of risk is provided by the Guidelines for the Management of IT Security published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which defines risk as the Potential that a given threat will exploit the vulnerability of an asset or group of assets to cause