Digital trust based on an organization’s security, resilience, and integrity has grown beyond being seen as just an IT issue. It is now seen as a strategic asset that has a direct effect on financial performance, market value, and access to capital. In this setting, CISOs need to think like CFOs and find a balance between technical protections and measurable business results. This means putting a number on trust, showing the return on security investments, and making sure that cybersecurity projects are in line with financial discipline and creating strategic value.
This blog post explores why and how CISOs need to change how they think about their jobs, not just as protectors but also as builders of trust-based value.
Why Digital Trust Is Now Strategic Capital
CFOs manage risk-adjusted financial capital while CISOs must promote trust capital, the intangible asset that improves brand, decreases premium risk and drives strategic growth. Once trust is broken, it takes a lot to get it back.
- Regulatory Catalyst: The SEC’s 2023 cybersecurity disclosure rules require public companies to disclose material cyber incidents within four business days and describe cyber risk management and governance in annual reports. Investors increasingly take breach readiness into account when figuring out how much a company is worth and how much it costs to borrow money.
- Liability Realities: Personal liability risk has become more visible. Uber’s former CSO was criminally convicted in 2022 for obstructing an FTC investigation related to a breach, and the SEC has brought a civil enforcement action against SolarWinds and its CISO alleging misleading cyber disclosures.
- Regulatory Catalyst: In 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made new rules about cybersecurity disclosures. These rules say that public companies must report significant cyber incidents within four business days and include information about their cyber risk management and governance practices in their annual reports. These rules show that being ready for cyberattacks is no longer just something that companies need to worry about, it's also something that investors are starting to think about when deciding how much a company is worth and how much it costs to borrow money.
- Liability Realities: Personal liability risk has become more visible. Uber’s former CSO was criminally convicted in 2022 for obstructing an FTC investigation related to a breach, and the SEC has brought a civil enforcement action against SolarWinds and its CISO alleging misleading cyber disclosures.
Cybersecurity isn't just a line item in the budget, it's an asset that needs to be managed wisely.
The CFO-CISO Playbook: Shared Focus Areas
| CFO Focus | CISO Equivalent | Strategic Parallel |
|---|---|---|
Balance sheet stability |
Trust balance |
Demonstrate cumulative trust via metrics. |
Budget ROI |
Secure ROI |
Show savings from avoided breaches and aligned investment. |
Scenario planning |
Breach forecasting |
Use risk modeling to set reserves and response plans. |
Disclosure & governance |
Cyber transparency |
Standardized, honest reporting builds investor and stakeholder trust. |
Communicating with the Board: Foundational Trust Dialogues
A recent survey of C-suite leaders found 31% believe their CISO paints an overly optimistic picture of security, and ~30% say CISOs are hesitant to flag concerns.
CFOs are great at framing problems in terms of money. CISOs must also figure out how much risks cost, what not taking action costs, how much revenue loss comes from median dwell time, and how much it will cost to recover. Boards want the truth, not spin. Translate technical metrics into business impact (e.g., how detection/response times and dwell time drive incident scope and recovery costs). Recent threat reports show global median dwell time has fallen to ~10 days, but impact still depends on speed of containment.
The Language of Business
Stop talking about technology. Start describing cybersecurity as keeping your business running, protecting your reputation and building consumer trust – not simply operational disruption, but also how risk scenarios affect P&Ls.
Creating a Security Framework Based on Trust
CISOs need to create a framework that includes financial discipline:
- Use KPIs as Financial Metrics
- The number of days it takes to find a breach is the same as the number of days it takes to avoid a loss.
- Number of high-severity incidents stopped = estimated money saved
- Percentage of workforce protected by MFA (especially phishing-resistant methods) associated with lower account-takeover risk.
- Modeling Based on Scenarios
- Use Monte Carlo simulations to look at breach cost scenarios.
- For fiscal arguments, compare the ROI of remediation and prevention.
- Governance Across Functions
- Work with the finance, legal and risk teams to set clear limits for incidents.
- Set up playbooks for each situation that cover how to talk to people and how to plan for expenses.
Trust-Based Security Leadership in the Real World
Budgeting for Cyber Resilience
Organizations that quantify Annualized Loss Expectancy (ALE) and present “loss-avoidance” scenarios often report better budget outcomes, according to boardroom and risk-management surveys.
Keeping Trust and Following the Rules
In regulated sectors such as healthcare, coordinated legal/finance/IR playbooks have been shown to reduce operational and reputational harm during ransomware events.
Digital Trust and the Changing Role of the CISO: From Tactical to Strategic
The modern CISO goes beyond just responding to alarms. They drive:
- Trust measurement and validation, like CFO audits
- Budgeting based on risk
- Scenario planning based on data
- Building trust with customers and investors
Tech Meets Finance: A New Set of Skills
CISOs need to know how to read trust balance sheets, not simply logs. This entails being able to understand risk economics, insurance models and how to allocate resources strategically.
The CISO Trust Roadmap: How to Get Started
- Make a list of all the cyber dangers and guess how much they will cost.
- Work with finance to come up with models for how a breach might affect things.
- Set up trust KPIs and add them to the dashboards for executives.
- Do tabletop simulations that indicate how money will be used.
- Don't list cybersecurity resilience as a line item; instead, pitch it as an advantage.
Future Vision: The Future: CFO-CISO Partnerships Should Be the Norm
We are entering a new era in which CFOs and CISOs are both responsible for keeping the business running:
- Earnings calls that include integrated trust measures.
- Cyber insurance coverage that is in line with active threat modeling.
- Cyber posture reports that meet regulatory standards, like financial audits.
- Shared leadership on risk and value initiatives at the board level.
CISOs who understand trust economics will impact the futures of businesses by making security a part of strategy as well as operations.
A Call to Action for the CISO
Learn how trust works in business, talk like a CFO, plan for different situations, and become the chief trust officer. In a world where digital trust is what makes a business successful, cybersecurity is no longer in the background; it's in the spotlight.
About the author: Sandeep Dommari is a Principal cybersecurity architect and IAM strategist with 18+ years of experience designing secure access frameworks across Fortune 100 enterprises. An internationally recognized leader, strategist, and author, focuses on application security, adaptive identity, and secure-by-design architectures for critical industries. His career spans senior security leadership roles in telecommunications, finance, government, and technology, where he has led large scale transformations and built high performing cybersecurity programs.
