How Cyber Risk Management Creates Value — And Validates the Cybersecurity Compass
Cybersecurity has too often been seen as a cost center, a technical necessity, or a compliance obligation. But that narrative is shifting — and the latest FAIR Institute data proves it. Organizations are now seeing cyber risk management (CRM) not only as a source of protection, but as a strategic enabler. This is more than a welcome evolution. For those of us who have long advocated for outcome-driven, risk-aligned security, it’s validation.
When I first developed the Cybersecurity Compass, it was based on the belief that cybersecurity needed a unified context — one that could guide teams across disciplines, from risk management to incident response, and translate cyber efforts into business value. With FAIR’s data in hand, that vision is no longer theoretical. It’s happening.
Why I Created the Cybersecurity Compass
After more than twenty years in cybersecurity — across technical roles, strategy leadership, and real-world incident response — one pattern became painfully clear: we were stuck in a cycle.
No matter how much we invested in tools or frameworks, we kept reacting. We were chasing threats, reporting incidents, patching systems — and then starting all over again. Even as our security capabilities matured, the fundamental nature of the work remained reactive and fragmented.
But the real turning point for me came when I began to notice a deeper issue: we weren’t speaking the same language. Security teams talked about vulnerabilities, logs, and alerts.
Business leaders talked about risk, performance, and outcomes.
The gap wasn’t just technical — it was strategic, operational, and cultural.
That’s when I started asking different questions:
What if we could build a common language that unites risk, response, and resilience?
What if cybersecurity could become directional — not just a defense mechanism, but a guide for decisions?
What if we could stop chasing incidents and start preventing them by design?
Those questions led to the creation of the Cybersecurity Compass.
It’s not just a framework — it’s a mental model that integrates three critical dimensions of cybersecurity:
Cyber Risk Management to drive alignment before a breach,
Detection and Response to act decisively during a breach,
Cyber Resilience to recover stronger after a breach.
And it orients them around time: before, during, and after, recognizing that risk is continuous, business doesn’t pause, and cybersecurity must evolve from static controls to dynamic strategy.
The Compass is the culmination of everything I’ve learned — not just from the field, but from the boardroom, the war room, and the many gray areas in between. It’s designed to close the communication gap, operationalize risk, and give cybersecurity a true strategic direction.
Breaking the Cycle Was Not Enough — We Needed a Better Strategy
For years, cybersecurity operated in a reactive loop:
Detect and respond to incidents,
Recover,
Then wait for the next breach.
It was a cycle we all knew too well — and it never stopped turning.
That’s when a deeper question emerged, one that ultimately gave rise to the Cybersecurity Compass:
What if we could reduce the number of attacks we need to detect and respond to in the first place?
That question reframed everything. It made clear that the answer wasn’t just better tools or faster response times — it was a shift in mindset. We didn’t just need to break the reactive cycle. We needed to change the entire trajectory of cyber risk.
That shift could only happen by elevating and operationalizing cyber risk management — not as a once-a-year compliance document, but as a continuous and embedded function that informs every cybersecurity decision. CRM needed to become a living system, not a static artifact.
This is why cyber risk management became a foundational pillar of the Cybersecurity Compass. Not only to align resources and optimize spending, but to make cybersecurity more proactive and predictive — reducing the likelihood and impact of attacks before they happen, not just responding after the damage is done.
The Value Categories of Cyber Risk Management — Explained
According to the FAIR Institute’s latest research, organizations are reporting clear, measurable benefits from cyber risk management. These benefits fall into four key categories — and each one reflects a directional outcome that the Cybersecurity Compass was designed to deliver.
Here’s what each value means and why it matters:
1. Alignment of Cybersecurity with Business Priorities (40%)
Why it matters: Cybersecurity doesn’t exist in a vacuum. For too long, security efforts have been disconnected from what the business is actually trying to achieve. Controls were deployed reactively. Resources were allocated by instinct or fear. The result? Misalignment, overspending in the wrong areas, and underprotection in the most critical ones.
How CRM creates value: Cyber risk management brings clarity. It quantifies the business impact of cyber scenarios, allowing leaders to prioritize based on what matters most — not just what’s loudest. When CRM is continuous and operationalized, it ensures that security investments are always aligned with evolving business goals, regulatory needs, and digital transformation efforts.
Cybersecurity Compass connection: This is the core function of the “Before the Breach” phase — where Cyber Risk Management proactively shapes the strategy, not just responds to threats.
2. Reduction of Organizational Risk (39%)
Why it matters: Ultimately, the purpose of cybersecurity is to reduce the risk of material harm to the business. But without a consistent risk model, it’s impossible to measure whether you’re truly reducing risk — or just increasing noise.
How CRM creates value: CRM enables risk reduction through contextualization and prioritization. By understanding likelihood, impact, and risk interdependencies (e.g., identity, data, business processes), organizations can focus on the scenarios that actually matter. This avoids wasted effort and allows for preventive actions that reduce both the number and severity of incidents.
Cybersecurity Compass connection: Risk reduction is a continuous process that connects all three layers of the Compass — prevention, detection, and recovery — and becomes measurable when guided by a consistent, living risk model.
3. Optimized Cybersecurity Spending (35%)
Why it matters: CISOs are under constant pressure to justify budgets. Yet cybersecurity spending often grows without a clear link to performance or business risk. In many organizations, more spending doesn’t mean better protection — it just means more tools.
How CRM creates value: CRM allows organizations to tie spending directly to risk reduction outcomes. By understanding which threats pose the most risk and what mitigations offer the best return on control (RoC), organizations can allocate budgets with confidence. This shifts cybersecurity from a sunk cost to a strategic investment.
Cybersecurity Compass connection: This is part of the directional shift at the center of the Compass — from activity-based security to outcome-based decision-making, powered by operationalized risk data.
4. Improved Credibility of the Cybersecurity Function (34%)
Why it matters: Credibility is a force multiplier. When the cybersecurity team is seen as trustworthy, aligned, and transparent, it earns the influence needed to drive change. Without credibility, even the best technical strategies fail to gain traction with leadership and business units.
How CRM creates value: When security leaders speak the language of risk and business — and back it up with data — they gain credibility. CRM frameworks like FAIR give CISOs and security teams the ability to explain decisions, justify trade-offs, and show progress in a way that resonates with executives and boards.
Cybersecurity Compass connection: Credibility is a product of consistent direction, proactive planning, and resilient recovery — exactly what the Compass was designed to deliver. It turns cybersecurity from a black box into a strategic partner.
5. Budget Justification for Cybersecurity (24%)
Why it matters: Justifying cybersecurity budgets is one of the most persistent challenges for CISOs. Without tangible evidence of effectiveness or risk reduction, cybersecurity can seem like an insurance policy that never pays off — until it’s too late.
How CRM creates value: CRM helps justify budgets by providing a defensible, quantitative model of what’s at stake. It connects investments to risk scenarios, helps communicate trade-offs, and shows the return on control (RoC) for each initiative. It transforms budget conversations from “how much are we spending?” to “how much risk are we reducing?”
Cybersecurity Compass connection: The Compass provides the strategic layer where budget decisions are mapped to risk and value. It makes CRM insights part of the planning process, rather than post-hoc justification.
6. Increased Trust of Internal Business Partners (23%)
Why it matters: Internal trust is critical. When business teams don’t trust security, they go around it. That leads to shadow IT, policy exceptions, and blind spots that increase risk.
How CRM creates value: CRM creates value by enabling transparent, risk-based communication across departments. It brings a shared understanding of exposure and helps teams work together on prioritization. When business partners see that security understands their goals and speaks their language, trust grows — and collaboration improves.
Cybersecurity Compass connection: The Compass fosters internal trust by integrating business alignment into its core. CRM doesn’t operate in isolation — it lives in every conversation about risk, performance, and decision-making.
7. Increased Trust of Customers and/or Improved Brand Reputation (20%)
Why it matters: Cyber incidents don’t just impact systems — they erode trust. In a digital world, brand reputation is directly tied to perceived security.
How CRM creates value: CRM enables organizations to demonstrate control, preparedness, and transparency. By managing risk consistently and communicating effectively, organizations build resilience not just in infrastructure, but in public trust.
Cybersecurity Compass connection: The Compass aligns risk management and resilience to ensure that brand-impacting events are prevented when possible — and recovered from with speed and integrity when not.
8. Increased Confidence of Corporate Board Directors in Cybersecurity (18%)
Why it matters: Board-level oversight is growing. Directors are asking more questions, demanding more clarity, and expecting security to show impact — not activity.
How CRM creates value: CRM gives boards what they need: structured, financial, risk-based information. It helps security leaders speak in scenarios, outcomes, and exposure — enabling informed governance and strategic alignment.
Cybersecurity Compass connection: The Compass provides the narrative boards need to evaluate cyber readiness across all stages. It frames CRM as an operational force that reduces uncertainty, not just as a compliance checkbox.
9. Improved Management of Third-Party Cyber Risk (16%)
Why it matters: Supply chain risk is one of the fastest-growing areas of cyber exposure. Yet vendor relationships are often opaque and hard to assess.
How CRM creates value: CRM extends risk visibility into the third-party ecosystem. It enables continuous assessment, prioritization, and response planning based on the impact third parties could have on critical operations.
Cybersecurity Compass connection: Third-party risk fits squarely within the proactive risk identification and alignment focus of the Compass. It ensures that external risk is treated with the same rigor as internal exposures.
10. Shift of Cybersecurity to Being More Proactive and Less Reactive (16%)
Why it matters: Reactive security leads to burnout, missed signals, and preventable breaches. Proactivity is the only sustainable path forward.
How CRM creates value: CRM enables proactivity by continuously monitoring risk, identifying changes in exposure, and triggering preemptive action. It helps teams get ahead of threats — instead of chasing them after damage is done.
Cybersecurity Compass connection: The Compass is built on this shift. At its core, it moves cybersecurity from detection to direction — giving teams a way to act with foresight, not just hindsight.
11. Faster Time to Market for Digital Products/Programs (11%)
Why it matters: If security slows down innovation, it will be bypassed. Speed is essential, but speed without safety is risky.
How CRM creates value: CRM brings risk visibility into early stages of product and service design. It allows for earlier decisions, streamlined approvals, and security that enables velocity — not delays.
Cybersecurity Compass connection: The Compass ensures that cybersecurity is part of business acceleration — embedded in processes before they become exposed.
12. Cyber Risk Management Has Not Helped Drive Business Outcomes (0%)
Why it matters: This result speaks volumes. Not one organization reported that CRM failed to drive value. That’s a rare consensus — and it reinforces that CRM is no longer optional or abstract.
How CRM creates value: Its ability to consistently produce measurable impact across risk, reputation, spend, and governance shows that CRM is now central to business performance. It’s not a report — it’s a practice.
Cybersecurity Compass connection: This validates the entire purpose of the Compass: making CRM continuous, connected, and outcome-driven — so it fuels real-world results across the lifecycle.
From Concept to Confirmation
The FAIR Institute report is more than validation of CRM as a function — it’s validation of the need for continuous, operationalized risk to be the compass guiding all cybersecurity activities.
Cyber risk management is not a document. It’s not a report. It’s a practice — a discipline — and when embedded correctly, it drives measurable business value.
We’ve always believed that cybersecurity could create business value. Now we have the data to prove it. The Cybersecurity Compass was built for this moment — and this moment proves why we built it.
FAIR Institute (2025). 2025 ‘State of Cyber Risk Management’ https://www.fairinstitute.org/blog/2025-state-of-cyber-risk-management-reveals-modern-outcome-oriented-approaches
Castro, J. (2024). Safely Sailing the Digital Ocean with the Cybersecurity Compass. ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/387410177 DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.20696.00003