Progress in bridging this divide occurs when CISOs and CFOs are prepared to satisfy midway, aligning technical priorities with monetary realities. Argyle realized that to maneuver the dialog ahead, he needed to change his strategy: he stopped defending the expertise and began exhibiting the influence. As a substitute of getting slowed down in technical jargon, he reframed cybersecurity by way of monetary threat, operational disruption, and bottom-line penalties. He additionally gave the CFO a hands-on view of the danger.
“We walked via a real-world ransomware situation that tied system downtime to misplaced income, compliance fines, and reputational fallout. However as an alternative of imprecise threats, we used precise monetary fashions,” he says. “The CFO noticed it much less as a security difficulty and extra like insurance coverage for enterprise continuity — and that was the unlock. We by no means had the identical friction once more after that.”
Throughout these conversations, Argyle by no means guarantees ROI within the conventional sense, he’s cautious to not promise a standard return on funding. As a substitute of promoting cybersecurity as a approach to earn a living, he frames it as a vital protect towards potential monetary, authorized, and reputational injury. “Cyber isn’t a shiny new device,” he says. “It’s a seatbelt.”
