Security teams face growing demands with more tools, more data, and higher expectations than ever. Boards approve large security budgets, yet still ask the same question: what is the business getting in return? CISOs respond with reports on controls and vulnerability counts – but executives want to understand risk in terms of financial exposure, operational impact, and avoiding loss.
The disconnect has become difficult to ignore. The average cost of a breach has reached $4.88 million, according to recent IBM data. That figure reflects not just incident response but also downtime, lost productivity, customer attrition, and the extended effort required to restore operations and trust. The fallout is rarely confined to security.
Security leaders need a model that brings those consequences into view before they surface. A Business Value Assessment (BVA) offers that model. It links exposures to cost, prioritization to return, and prevention to tangible value.
This article will explain how a BVA works, what it measures, and why it is becoming essential for organizations that understand that cybersecurity is a key business function, not just an IT issue.
Why Security Metrics No Longer Translate
Most security metrics were built for operational teams, not business leaders. CVE counts, patch rates and tool coverage help track progress, but they don’t answer the questions that matter to the board: What would a breach actually cost us? How much risk have we taken off the table? Where does this investment make a difference?
Traditional metrics fall short for a few key reasons:
- They show activity, not impact. Saying 3,000 vulnerabilities were fixed last quarter doesn’t explain whether any of them were tied to systems that matter. It tells you what got done – not what got safer. (if you want to learn more about this topic, check out our recent webinar on it – it’s filled with can’t-miss insights into how vanity metrics will throw off your understanding of your security posture, and what to do about it. )
- They miss how exposures connect. A single misconfiguration might look minor until it combines with an identity issue or a flat network segment. Most metrics don’t reflect how attackers chain weaknesses to reach critical assets.
- They leave out financial consequences. Breach costs aren’t one-size-fits-all. They depend on everything from detection time and data type to cloud complexity and staffing gaps – factors most dashboards never touch.
A BVA helps bridge the gap between technical findings and what the business actually needs to understand. It connects exposure data to financial impact, using breach cost modeling grounded in real-world research. Assessments should be based on inputs from sources like the IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report, which outlines factors that shape the cost of an incident – from how quickly a breach is detected to how complex the IT environment is. IBM uses those factors to analyze what a breach costs after the fact – but they can also be used to project what it could cost ahead of time, based on the organization’s actual posture.
That’s where a BVA comes in. Rather than tracking surface-level metrics, it reframes cybersecurity in terms of outcomes. It shifts the conversation. It moves from counting remediations to showing outcomes. It offers a clear picture of how exposures lead to impact, what’s at stake, and where security investments can deliver measurable value. That gives security leaders the context they need to support decisions with confidence.
The Business Value Assessment: What It Measures
It’s one thing to say a risk has been reduced. It’s another to show what that means in dollars, time, or business impact. That’s what a BVA is purpose-built to do. It connects the dots between security work and outcomes that the rest of the business actually cares about. A BVA should focus on three things:
- Cost Avoidance – What would a breach likely cost based on the risks in your environment, and how much of that can be prevented by fixing the right exposures?
- Cost Reduction – Where can security efforts help cut spending? That might include shrinking the scope of manual testing, reducing patching overhead, or improving your insurance profile by showing better risk posture.
- Efficiency Gains – How much time and effort can you save by giving your team better priorities and automating what doesn’t need a human touch?
These real-world numbers help security leaders plan better, spend smarter, and make the case when decisions or budgets are on the line.
Why Delay and Inaction Cost More Than You Think
The financial impact of a breach increases with every day of delay. Incidents involving identity-based exposures or shadow data now take over 290 days to contain. During that time, businesses experience loss of revenue, stalled operations, and prolonged reputational harm. What’s more, the IBM report shows that 70% of breaches lead to major operational disruption – many of those never fully recover.
A BVA brings clarity to that timeline. It identifies the exposures most likely to prolong an incident and estimates the cost of that delay based on both your industry and organizational profile. It also helps evaluate the return of preemptive controls. For example, IBM found that companies that deploy effective automation and AI-based remediation see breach costs drop by as much as $2.2 million.
Some organizations hesitate to act when the value isn’t clearly defined. That delay has a cost. A BVA should include a “cost of doing nothing” model that estimates the monthly loss a company takes on by leaving exposures unaddressed. We’ve found that for a large enterprise, that cost can exceed half a million dollars.
But understanding the cost of inaction is only half the battle. To truly change outcomes, security leaders need to use that understanding to guide strategy and build cross-functional support.
The Bottom Line: From Spend to Strategy, BVA Builds Alignment
There’s no question about how well security teams are doing the work. The issue is that traditional metrics don’t always show what their work means. Patch counts and tool coverage aren’t what boards care about. They want to know what’s actually being protected. A BVA helps connect the dots – showing how day-to-day security efforts help the business avoid losses, save time, and stay more resilient.
It also makes hard conversations easier. Whether it’s justifying a budget, walking the board through risk, or answering questions from insurers, a BVA gives security leaders something solid to point to. It shows where the team is making a difference – cutting down on busywork, reducing third-party testing, and improving how the organization handles risk.
And most importantly, it gets everyone on the same page. Security, IT, and finance don’t have to guess at each other’s priorities. They can work from the same numbers, focus on what really matters, and move faster when it counts.
It’s this shift that makes the real difference. Security stops being the team that says “no” and starts being the team that helps the business move forward. With a BVA, leadership finally has a clear way to see progress, make smarter decisions, and deal with risk before it turns into something bigger.
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Want to see what a BVA can tell you about risk in your organization? Check out the XM Cyber ROI Calculator and start understanding how to avoid losses, save time, and stay more resilient.
Note: This expert article was contributed by David Lettvin, Inside Channel Account Manager, XM Cyber.
