Cybersecurity Spending Soars, But Business Impact Remains Unclear
▼ Summary
– Security and finance leaders agree on cybersecurity’s strategic importance, but finance executives lack trust in security teams’ ability to explain business impact and connect spending to strategy.
– The two groups define risk differently: security focuses on compliance and reputation, while finance evaluates risk through financial modeling, business continuity, and avoided losses.
– A reporting gap exists, as security metrics (like incidents and costs) don’t satisfy finance’s need for data linking spending to enterprise goals and measurable savings, slowing budget approvals.
– While collaboration is common, alignment suffers without frequent, high-level engagement (e.g., between CISOs and CFOs), which is linked to stronger agreement on priorities and value.
– Budgets are expected to rise, but inconsistent decision-making authority and finance’s need for stronger business cases in financial terms complicate investment justifications.
Cybersecurity budgets continue to reach new heights, yet a persistent challenge remains: demonstrating the tangible business value of these investments. A recent study surveying security and finance leaders at major corporations reveals a significant disconnect. While both groups agree on the importance of cybersecurity, they often struggle to find common ground when evaluating risk, justifying expenditures, and measuring outcomes.
Security leaders are confident their priorities support broader company goals, and finance executives generally acknowledge that cybersecurity is a strategic business concern, not just a technical one. However, this shared belief doesn’t always translate into smooth budget approvals. Finance teams frequently express uneven trust in security teams’ ability to explain business impact, prioritize investments based on risk, and connect initiatives to company strategy. Security executives themselves admit to a lack of confidence that current spending perfectly aligns with the organization’s actual risk exposure. Strategic agreement exists, but confidence in execution and results remains fragile.
A core issue lies in how each department defines risk. Security professionals typically view unacceptable risk through the lens of compliance failures, damage to customer trust, or harm to the company’s reputation. Direct financial loss often carries less weight in their assessments. In contrast, finance teams frame risk through financial modeling and business continuity. Their investment decisions focus on avoiding monetary loss, saving time, and reducing operational disruption. Metrics from internal security reports or compliance checklists hold less sway in these evaluations.
These differing perspectives shape every conversation. Security teams speak in terms of controls, program maturity, and threat reduction. Finance leaders listen for projected financial impact and concrete operational outcomes. Both sides may believe they are communicating effectively, yet they are often using entirely different reference points, which slows down critical decisions.
Reporting practices further complicate the relationship. Security teams commonly report on incidents, control costs, and maturity levels. Finance leaders find these metrics insufficient for making investment choices; they need reporting that explicitly ties cybersecurity spending to enterprise goals, operational stability, and measurable cost savings. This gap creates a cycle of frustration: finance cites uncertainty about return on investment and high upfront costs, while security feels underfunded and struggles to convey urgency in terms that resonate financially.
One expert emphasizes this point, stating that cybersecurity must learn to speak the language of the business, where finance is the common tongue. This means framing discussions around impact to the bottom line and the risk of business disruption.
Interestingly, both groups describe their working relationships in positive terms, noting regular collaboration. However, this collaboration often remains at the director level, with less frequent direct engagement between Chief Information Security Officers and Chief Financial Officers. Organizations that foster more executive-level interaction report stronger alignment on priorities and greater confidence in cybersecurity’s business value. When strategic discussions are infrequent, agreement on risk tolerance and budget expectations weakens.
Despite these challenges, budgets are still projected to rise. Security leaders anticipate larger increases, while finance executives expect more modest growth. A complicating factor is the inconsistent ownership of final investment decisions, which can involve security, finance, IT, or executive leadership, muddying accountability.
Finance executives point to a clear path forward: stronger business cases, improved reporting, and better education on cybersecurity risk. They also highlight the need to translate technical risk into financial terms and to establish shared accountability for outcomes. Ultimately, cybersecurity teams must understand the key performance indicators that matter to the business and be able to communicate how their work directly contributes to those KPIs in the universal language of dollars and cents.
(Source: HelpNet Security)
