"Security is a tax on the business." — Every CFO, usually right before a breach.

For decades, CISOs have walked into boardrooms trying to explain the Return on Investment (ROI) of a firewall. It’s a doomed conversation because the premise is wrong.

• Investment: You put $1 in, you get $2 out.
• Security: You put $1 in, and nothing bad happens.

Security isn't an investment. It’s Rent.

The Price of Civilization

We live in a digital miracle. I can video call Tokyo from a pocket computer. I can move millions of dollars with a keystroke. The cost of this miracle is absolute vulnerability. Connecting everything means everything can attack everything.

Security is the rent we pay to live in this digital city. If you stop paying the rent, you don't save money. You get evicted. Eviction looks like ransomware. It looks like the SEC investigations. It looks like what happened to CrowdStrike.

When the Rent Check Bounces (CrowdStrike)

In July 2024, the world got a vivid demonstration of what happens when the digital foundation cracks. CrowdStrike pushed a bad update. It wasn't a sophisticated nation-state hack; it was a QA failure. 8.5 million Windows devices blue-screened. Airlines grounded fleets. Hospitals cancelled surgeries. In weeks, CrowdStrike’s market cap bled billions.

This wasn't a "glitch." It was a reminder that in the modern enterprise, the CISO is not just a digital janitor. They are the Custodian of Shareholder Value. The market punished CrowdStrike not for being hacked, but for being unreliable.

Quantifying the Invisible

The problem is that "Rent" is a philosophy, and CFOs speak Math. This is where the FAIR Model (Factor Analysis of Information Risk) becomes the translator. It stops us from saying "Ransomware is scary" and forces us to say: "We expect a loss event every 2 years. The cost of that event is $8M (Forensics, Fines, Downtime). Therefore, our Annualized Loss Expectancy (ALE) is $4M."

Suddenly, spending $500k to reduce that risk to $50k isn't a "Tax." It's a 600% return. But ultimately, the math is secondary to the social contract. In the B2B SaaS economy, Trust is the only currency that matters. Your code can be copied. Your pricing can be undercut. But if you lose the customer's data, you have broken the promise. You don't pay for security to make money; you pay so you are allowed to keep playing the game.