Finance’s Role in Cyber Incident Response
Cyber incidents can cripple operations within hours, and finance teams must be ready to respond decisively when attacks occur. This article outlines five critical actions finance leaders should take to minimize financial losses and maintain business continuity during a cyber crisis. Drawing on insights from cybersecurity and finance experts, these strategies provide a practical framework for managing the economic impact of security breaches.
Activate Preapproved Cyber Cost Playbook
During a recent cyber incident, the single most effective step the finance team took to minimize reporting chaos was activating a pre-approved cyber downtime cost and ransom accounting playbook that had already been aligned with Legal and IT during tabletop exercises. This framework clearly defined how to classify ransomware payments, business interruption losses, forensic costs, and insurance receivables in real time, eliminating ad-hoc judgments under pressure. Coordination on materiality and disclosure timing followed a standing protocol where IT validated the scope and system impact, Legal assessed regulatory and contractual thresholds, and finance quantified exposure against pre-agreed benchmarks within the first 48 hours. This disciplined approach aligns with findings from IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024, which shows organizations with incident response planning and cross-functional testing reduce breach lifecycle costs by nearly 30%. Early integration with cyber insurance carriers further accelerated recovery, as loss documentation and coverage mapping were already standardized, enabling faster claims processing and more confident external reporting when it mattered most.
Adopt a Downtime Impact Calculator
Q1: Previously, when our organization experienced downtime due to a cyber incident, IT would provide Finance and senior management with a determination of the "value" of that down time. Rather than continuing to have debates between Finance and IT, we created a pre-approved "Cyber Impact Calculator" that enables Finance to pull downtime telemetry provided by IT and use it in the determination of the financial impact of a cyber downtime. By doing this, we changed a subjective Guesstimate into a defendable financial metric that is defined and ready for board support within hours of a breach.
Q2: We coordinate with Legal and IT to establish a "Materiality Matrix" that is consistent with the four day disclosure requirement by the SEC. As soon as IT determines the technical scope of a breach, Finance maps that technical scope against the pre-defined fiscal thresholds in the matrix to determine if the breach was of "material" magnitude. We have also configured our ERP to capture and classify all expenses incurred in recovering from an incident, including all incident-related expenses within a "Cyber Event" cost center. This way the audit trail of those expenses is established in advance of the final resolution of the incident.
Cyber Resilience is ultimately a Data Problem and not solely a Security Issue. When Finance, IT, and Legal are all on the same page as to the definition of risk and materiality prior to a breach occurring, it frees up the organization to concentrate on recovering instead of placing blame.
Align Teams and Rehearse Crisis Protocols
In SaaS companies, when systems go down, chaos spreads fast. I've seen teams avoid this with a simple plan. Get finance, legal, and IT in a room before anything happens. They need to decide when to tell customers and which losses get reported to insurance. This sets clear expectations for everyone. Then write it down and run a fake crisis drill. You don't want to figuring this out at 3am when the servers are already offline.
Centralize Communications with a Ready Template
When a cyber event hit AthenaHQ, a dedicated Slack channel and incident template kept our financial reports clear for insurance and internal use. We synced with Legal and IT daily to nail down what was material, making our disclosures accurate and timely with less back-and-forth. Our living playbook also cut the confusion once everyone knew their role. Create these processes together before you need them. It's way easier to adjust a plan than invent one under pressure.
Define Authorities and Notify Carriers Early
We have not faced any incidence, one of our clients has faced it, he ended up paying ransom, another client he refused to pay ransom, ignored all mail threats, and he rebuilt the entire system to continue their business. Our country has a policy of reporting cyber incidence to the government within 6 hours, so our client did that.
One step that can make a real difference is agreeing in advance on how financial decisions would be handled if systems went offline. Before the incident, the finance team must have a simple written plan that defines how downtime costs will be captured, which expenses could be approved immediately, and which required executive approval. When the incident occurs, no time will be spent debating authority or process.
During the incident, finance can track costs in broad categories instead of detailed entries. This allows the team to keep records without slowing response efforts. At the same time, legal can advise on what information should be documented immediately and what should remain under privilege. IT can focus on containment, recovery, and evidence collection, and is not pulled into cost discussions unless facts are needed.
Materiality must be assessed using thresholds that have already been agreed upon. Finance can estimate impact based on business interruption and recovery costs, legal can review disclosure obligations, and IT can confirm scope and duration. Updates are shared in short, structured check-ins rather than large meetings.
Insurance must be notified early, even before the full impact is known. This allows claims and recovery discussions to proceed without delays later.
What helps most is that roles and expectations are defined ahead of time, so each team stays focused on its responsibilities while information flows in a controlled way.
