The Silent Struggle: Unpacking the Challenges of Communicating Cybersecurity Progress

There is a familiar moment that many security leaders eventually experience, even if they rarely talk about it openly.

You walk into a board or audit committee meeting with a carefully prepared quarterly security report. The data is clean. The visuals are polished. Most of the indicators are green. You explain how many attacks were blocked, how many vulnerabilities were patched, and how many alerts the SOC processed.

From a technical standpoint, the story is positive.

Then someone on the board asks a question that none of your charts directly answer:

“All of this activity looks reassuring—but are we actually safer than we were last quarter?”

This is not a hostile question. It is a reasonable one. And yet, it exposes a persistent gap between how cybersecurity teams report progress and how boards assess risk.

The issue is not a lack of data. It is a lack of decision-grade insight.

The Limits of Activity-Based Security Reporting

Traditional cybersecurity reporting is built around events: attacks detected, connections blocked, vulnerabilities closed. These metrics are operationally useful, but they describe motion, not posture.

To a board, “millions of blocked attacks” has no baseline. Is that normal? Is it improving? Does it matter? Without context, volume becomes noise. A fully green dashboard can coexist with serious latent risk—and boards know this intuitively.

What they are trying to understand is not how busy security systems are, but whether the organization’s exposure is shrinking, whether operations are becoming more resilient, and whether controls align with how the business actually functions.

This is where most reporting frameworks break down.

Why Identity Changes the Conversation

Identity is the one security domain that maps directly to how boards already think about the enterprise.

Executives may not grasp the mechanics of endpoint telemetry or packet inspection, but they immediately understand questions like:

• Who still has access after they leave the company?
• How quickly do new hires become productive?
• How much access is granted by design versus by exception?

Identity data ties security outcomes to people, roles, and accountability. It converts abstract cyber risk into concrete business scenarios.

For IAM leaders, this creates an opportunity: board reporting can move from “technical assurance” to risk governance.

When framed correctly, Identity Governance metrics simultaneously demonstrate:

• Risk reduction, by constraining unnecessary access
• Operational efficiency, by removing friction from workforce lifecycle events

Below are three IAM-centric metrics that consistently resonate at the board level—not because they are clever, but because they reflect realities executives already care about.

Termination Access Revocation Time

(Risk Exposure Control)

What is often reported:
“Number of inactive or stale accounts disabled.”

This sounds reassuring, but it is retrospective. It tells the board what was cleaned up, not how exposed the organization was in the meantime.

What boards actually need to see:
Average time between employee termination and full access revocation across critical systems.

This metric defines a measurable risk exposure window. It answers a simple but uncomfortable question: For how long does a former employee retain the ability to access corporate systems after their relationship with the company ends?

In organizations without mature IAM lifecycle automation, this window is often measured in days—or longer. From a governance perspective, that is difficult to defend.

How to frame it at the board level:

“Last year, access revocation following employee departures averaged multiple business days. Through automated identity lifecycle controls, we have reduced that window to hours. This materially lowers the risk of unauthorized access tied to workforce changes.”

This is not a technical improvement. It is a demonstrable reduction in insider-related exposure.

New Hire Access Readiness Time

(Operational Efficiency and Business Velocity)

What is often reported:
“Number of access requests fulfilled” or “ticket resolution time.”

These metrics reinforce the perception of security as a reactive service function.

What boards care about instead:
How long it takes for a new employee to gain the access required to perform their role.

This is a productivity metric with direct financial implications. Delayed access translates into delayed output—particularly for revenue-generating or highly specialized roles.

By reporting on time-to-access readiness, IAM leaders reposition identity controls as a business accelerator rather than an administrative hurdle.

How to frame it:

“By standardizing role-based access for core functions, we now provision the majority of required access automatically on the employee’s first day. This has reduced onboarding delays and returned measurable productivity hours to the business.”

This is where IAM investment becomes self-evident. Faster onboarding is not an abstract benefit; it is operational leverage.

Role-Based Access Coverage

(Governance Maturity)

What is often reported:
Binary audit outcomes—pass or fail.

While necessary, these results say little about how access decisions are actually made day to day.

What boards respond to:
The proportion of access governed by defined roles versus individual exceptions.

Low role coverage signals an environment where access accumulates organically over time, increasing complexity and exposure. High role coverage indicates intentional design, enforceable policy, and predictable outcomes.

This metric provides a maturity curve the board can track over time.

How to frame it:

“Today, a significant portion of access is still granted through ad-hoc approvals rather than standardized roles. Our objective is to increase role-based coverage in high-risk business units, reducing excess privileges and simplifying access reviews.”

This shifts governance from a compliance obligation to an architectural discipline.

Why Identity Metrics Succeed Where Security Metrics Fail

The persistent frustration many CISOs and IAM leaders feel in board meetings is not due to resistance or lack of interest. It is due to misalignment.

When security leaders present firewall statistics, they are asking board members to interpret technical data outside their expertise. When they present identity metrics, they are discussing people, access, and accountability—areas boards already oversee.

Identity metrics do not require the board to become cybersecurity experts. They allow the board to exercise governance using familiar concepts: control, oversight, efficiency, and risk tolerance.

Conclusion

Improving board engagement does not require more dashboards or more detailed charts. It requires reporting on the right layer of the stack.

Replacing slides on attack volume with metrics like access revocation time, onboarding readiness, and role coverage changes the conversation. It anchors cybersecurity progress in outcomes that matter to the business.

For IAM leaders, this is more than a reporting adjustment. It is a strategic repositioning.

When identity metrics lead the discussion, cybersecurity stops being a background technical function and starts being what it has quietly become: a foundational element of how the organization governs risk and enables growth.

That is the story boards are ready to hear.