India’s $2.4 million breach alert: Time to quantify cyber risk, not just manage it

A longstanding communication divide exists between cybersecurity leadership and the Board. One speaks the language of technical threats, lateral movement and exploits; while the other speaks the language of the balance sheet, market share, profitability and risk mitigation. This disconnect has never been more expensive. The average cost of a data breach in India reached a whopping $2.4 million in 2025, a 13% increase from the previous year. Despite ballooning cybersecurity budgets, many organisations are trapped in the cycle of reactionary spending. They are pouring money into the flames rather than investing in fireproofing their IT infrastructure. 

Only about 30% of organisations prioritise budgeting for proactive cybersecurity. The rest are effectively gambling, focused on “after-the-breach” costs like customer notification, litigation, regulatory fines, and recovery. Reactive costs are unpredictable because a breach doesn’t just hit the balance sheet; it effectively halts innovation, erodes trust and impacts brand equity. 

The essential pivot lies in Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ). The art of turning digital threats into financial narratives. Telling a Director that the organisation has “100,000 critical vulnerabilities” sounds dire and urgent, but it doesn’t offer a solution. On the other hand, telling the Director that “vulnerabilities in the company’s supply chain portal pose a $50 million risk to the Q2 revenue” changes the conversation entirely. This is CRQ, and it is the language CISOs need to speak so boards listen and wake up to the reality of cyber risk. 

Cyber Risk Quantification is a strategic pivot

CRQ is the engine that turns a “breach mentality” into a “balance sheet mentality”. That’s because it estimates the potential financial losses or impacts from cyber risks. When CISOs quantify risks, they start applying the same rigorous ROI analysis to cybersecurity that is applied to capital expenditures like research and development.

CRQ prioritises capital allocation. Instead of spending cyber budgets on every possible threat, leaders can double down on the ones that pose the greatest risk to business continuity. With a clear understanding of quantified risk, organisations can negotiate better cyber insurance premiums and ensure their coverage aligns with true cyber exposure. 

Quantifying cyber risk requires a preventive security approach, powered by exposure management. With it, organisations will have a dynamic view of the threat landscape, allowing them to pivot defences as new threats emerge or as they enter new digital territories. 

It shifts thinking from compliance-first to complete visibility, enabling exposure management solutions that power CRQ to help organisations understand how safe they actually are.  While compliance checks whether the door is locked, exposure management and CRQ estimate the likelihood of the lock failing, what lies behind it, and the financial impact if breached.

By adopting metrics like CRQ, organisations can bridge the gap between technical reality and strategic risk management. That’s because these scores aggregate diverse data points, such as vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and identity risks, into a single, navigable metric. This ensures executives see how well key cyber controls are performing and whether SLAs for critical assets are being met. 

The ultimate goal of CRQ, powered by exposure management, is to help CISOs speak the language that business leaders understand in the form of growth enablement. When CISOs master the ability to quantify and manage cyber risk, they have the license to innovate quickly, adopt AI, migrate to the cloud, and enter new partnerships with the confidence that they understand the digital cost of these moves and can protect these new assets. 

In an era where trust is the currency that runs the digital economy, organisations that can demonstrate a proactive, quantified approach to security become more attractive partners and more resilient brands.

The $2.4 million breach cost is a wake-up call for the Indian enterprise. They can no longer afford to be reactive. By shifting the focus from technical vulnerabilities to strategic exposure and from “checking boxes” to “quantifying risk”,  leaders can turn their greatest digital liabilities into their strongest strategic assets.

Rajnish Gupta

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Rajnish Gupta is country manager and managing director at Tenable India.