The Quantified Value of Cybersecurity: Key Insights for CEOs and Cyber Risk Managers from the 2025 State of Cyber Risk Management Report
- Ivo Martins
- Jul 25
- 4 min read
In today's dynamic business environment, cybersecurity is no longer just a technical function; it's a critical driver of business resilience and competitive advantage. The 2025 State of Cyber Risk Management Report provides a data-driven examination of how leading organizations are evolving their cyber risk programs to meet increasing business, regulatory, and operational demands. Based on a global survey of 402 cyber risk leaders and practitioners, this report offers crucial insights for both executive leadership and cyber risk managers on transforming cybersecurity risk management (CRM) from a compliance checklist into a strategic asset.
For the CEO: Turning Cyber Risk into Business Resilience
As a CEO, you're accountable for enterprise risk management, and cyber risks are increasingly central to this. This report highlights that CRM is fuelling tangible business results, including improved alignment with the business, greater risk reduction, and optimized cybersecurity spending.
Here’s what the most mature organizations are doing differently, and how it directly impacts your bottom line:
Proactive and Business-Aligned Approach: Organizations with highly mature CRM programs are significantly more likely to have board-approved risk tolerances, quantify risk in financial terms, embed CRM across business functions, and maintain a proactive cybersecurity posture. This means anticipating threats and mitigating vulnerabilities before they manifest, rather than just reacting to incidents.
The Power of Quantification (FAIR & CRQ): The report reveals that Factor Analysis of Information Risk (FAIR) and cyber risk quantification (CRQ) are rapidly gaining momentum. Nearly 45% of organizations either use or plan to use FAIR, and among those who have adopted it, a remarkable 90% report success. Organizations that are very successful with FAIR report better business outcomes, including greater risk reduction (54% vs. 40% overall), improved credibility of the cybersecurity team (77% vs. 56% overall), and optimized cybersecurity spending (65% vs. 58% overall). Quantifying cyber risk in monetary terms translates technical jargon into meaningful business language, which is crucial for informed strategic decisions and board-level oversight.
Automation and AI Drive Scale and Impact: A significant 72% of organizations have mostly or completely automated their CRM systems, and 48% are utilizing AI for CRM. This isn't just about efficiency; both CRM automation and the use of AI are strongly correlated with higher maturity and improved business outcomes. For example, organizations with high automation report better risk reduction, optimized spending, and improved scalability for third-party risk management.
Data is the Lifeblood: Effective CRM programs reduce uncertainty by grounding decisions in measurable inputs, utilizing a diverse range of data sources from commonly deployed cybersecurity tools, such as endpoint security data (78%), cyber threat intelligence (77%), and compliance audit results (76%). Operationalizing this data provides a clearer and more defensible picture of your organization's risk exposure.
Integration with Enterprise Risk Management (ERM): Cyber risk is no longer siloed. Nearly all respondents communicate cyber risks to ERM, and 38% both communicate and manage cyber risks together with enterprise risks. This convergence allows for prioritizing cybersecurity investments based on overall enterprise impact, aligning security goals with business strategy, and facilitating board-level oversight of technology risk.
While technology-focused C-suite leaders (CTOs, CISOs, CIOs, CROs) are the primary consumers of cyber risk information, boards currently consume this information in less than half of participating organizations. This highlights a key opportunity for further enhancing board engagement through financial quantification.
For the Cyber Risk Manager: Practical Strategies for Enhanced Value
As a cyber risk manager, your role is evolving beyond technical controls to a strategic discipline that drives business performance. The report confirms that demand for CRM is growing internally, with nearly all (95%) respondents reporting increased internal demand, especially in organizations with high CRM maturity.
Here's how to elevate your CRM program and deliver maximum value:
Prioritize Business-Aligned Outcomes: Focus on outcomes that resonate with the business, such as financial impact, cost management, risk reduction, and compliance. Remember, CRM is a strategic discipline that supports business performance and resilience, not just a technical process.
Champion FAIR and Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ): Adopting FAIR can lead to significantly better outcomes, including enhanced team credibility, optimized spending, and greater risk reduction. This shift towards financially framing cyber risk is key to communicating effectively with executive leadership.
Embrace Automation: Your CRM systems should be automated. The majority of organizations (72%) have already achieved mostly or completely automated CRM systems. This automation strongly correlates with higher CRM maturity and improved outcomes, demonstrating its necessity for keeping pace with business demands. Specialized CRQ solutions are increasingly preferred over general-purpose GRC platforms for this purpose.
Integrate Across Operations: CRM is no longer confined to security teams. Integrate with diverse business and IT functions, including IT asset management (96%), IT service management (95%), finance and accounting (81%), and legal and compliance (77%). While integration with product development, supply chain, and HR is still emerging, these areas represent significant opportunities for enhancing risk management.
Leverage AI Strategically: Nearly half of organizations (48%) are already using AI for CRM, and many more are experimenting or planning adoption. AI can support underlying capabilities like threat detection, incident response, malware analysis, and vulnerability management. It's also increasingly used for third-party risk management by processing unstructured data to populate CRQ models. AI adoption is strongly correlated with higher CRM maturity and a more proactive cybersecurity posture.
Address Organizational Challenges: The most common challenges aren't technical, but organizational: poor communication between departments (37%), resistance from peers and stakeholders (34%), and a lack of executive commitment or prioritization (33%). Focusing on improving communication, securing executive support, and fostering cross-departmental collaboration can yield significant benefits.
Strengthen Third-Party Risk Management: All surveyed organizations extend their CRM programs to third-party risk processes. While maturity in this area is generally lower than first-party CRM, the benefits are clear, including better alignment across procurement, security, and legal, and greater visibility into critical third-party dependencies.
The Future of Cyber Risk Management: A Strategic Imperative
The 2025 State of Cyber Risk Management Report clearly indicates that CRM is maturing into a discipline that empowers organizations to navigate uncertainty with confidence. This evolution is driven by powerful trends: growing internal demand, expanding adoption of FAIR and quantification, institutionalization of automation and AI, deeper integration into enterprise governance, and accelerating regulatory pressure.
By embracing quantification, automation, and data, your organization will be best positioned to reduce uncertainty, enable smarter decisions, and build digital trust. This shift from compliance to strategic advantage is not just an aspiration; it's the reality for leading organizations today.