Clorox

How CISOs Can Speak to CEOs: Translating Cyber Risks into Business Impact and Financial Consequences

The July 2025 Aeroflot cyber incident, claimed by Silent Crow and Belarusian Cyber-Partisans, demonstrated how technical vulnerabilities quickly translate into canceled flights, regulatory investigations, stock market reactions, and direct executive accountability. The article examines the persistent communication gap between CISOs, who focus on metrics like EDR coverage and mean time to detect, and CEOs, who prioritize costs, operational disruptions, revenue loss, and personal liability. Research from EY and Splunk highlights differing perceptions of threats and success measures, while real-world cases such as Marks & Spencer, Jaguar Land Rover, Clorox, Change Healthcare, SolarWinds, and Uber show how contractor weaknesses, missing MFA, and delayed disclosures lead to hundreds of millions in damages and legal actions. Regulatory developments, including SEC charges against CISOs and Russia's 420-FZ with turnover-based fines, further force cybersecurity discussions into the boardroom. The piece provides a practical translation table showing how technical warnings should be reframed using concrete business scenarios and financial impacts. It concludes that both CISOs and CEOs must initiate conversations around unacceptable events, downtime costs, and risk reduction versus post-incident consequences.