In-memory data stores, such as Memcached, Redis, KeyDB, and Dragonfly, have evolved significantly over the past few decades. They offer high performance by leveraging RAM speeds for faster data retrieval and manipulation. However, potential risks include volatility of RAM, not strongly guaranteed persistence, size limitations, and security issues due to misconfigured access control. To mitigate these risks, best practices such as regular snapshots and backups, maintaining high availability, horizontal and vertical scaling techniques, and network security measures should be implemented. These practices ensure that the performance metrics of in-memory data stores remain high while protecting applications from potential issues.