The Business Case for Burning Down Security Debt: A Practical Approach for CISOs
Security debt, defined as long-unresolved vulnerabilities, is growing as organizations discover issues faster than they can remediate them, increasing business risk. CISOs should treat security debt like financial debt by measuring and managing it at the executive level, prioritizing fixes based on exploitability and business impact, focusing on critical applications, and expanding remediation capacity through investment and automation. Aligning security efforts with business risk and establishing clear metrics helps secure executive support and improve risk management outcomes.








