By Martin Greenfield, CEO at Quod Orbis
For years, cyber security sat firmly on the cost side of the balance sheet. It was framed as protection against loss, an insurance policy against worst-case scenarios, and a regulatory necessity. But as high-profile breaches continue to hit the headlines and the financial impact is more overtly reported, the mindset and framing of security incidents is changing.
Moving into 2026, investors are paying closer attention to how organisations are acting to secure their data, assets and sensitive information, not just as a cyber issue, but as a core measure of operational resilience. Cyber resilience is increasingly understood as an indicator of operational quality, leadership discipline and long-term viability. A long-standing factor in investor decision-making, the focus is increasingly on whether a business can continue operating when technology, suppliers or systems fail, and how well it can absorb and recover from the financial and reputational impact of a breach.
Disruption is now a constant
Digital disruption is no longer rare. Outages, ransomware incidents, cloud service failures and AI-driven errors now occur frequently enough that they are more likely to impact an organisation than they’re not. A significant contributor to the widened risk platform is the increase in 3rd party suppliers and tools which has accelerated further by AI applications in recent years. Data is more dispersed meaning visibility and control can be harder to come by.
When disruption becomes something to be expected, the differentiator shifts from prevention to how an organisation can absorb the impact and recover quickly from it. Investors are responding by looking beyond growth narratives and short-term performance, where in doing so they are examining how businesses manage risk in practice and how consistently they maintain control under pressure.
What investors are focussing on
The patterns at which cyber incidents are occurring are revealing just how well a business is governed, how exposed it may be and the overall financial impact that the exposure could have.
Sales performance and market potential have long been top of the agenda for investors assessing whether or not to invest, while we shouldn’t anticipate that to change, there are other indicators carrying more weight in valuation and due diligence conversations.
Operational outage history is one of the most visible signals. Repeated service disruption suggests weaknesses in architecture, change management or incident response. Even brief outages contribute to a broader picture of resilience maturity.
Dependency on suppliers has also moved up the agenda as heavy reliance on single cloud providers, communications platforms or outsourced services expands the risk profile of a business whilst diluting visibility and control.
This also applies to AI and automation which of course have great potential to introduce new efficiency gains, but they also create new failure modes. Poorly governed models, unchecked automation and limited oversight raise questions about accountability.
Investors increasingly expect organisations to demonstrate how AI-driven systems are monitored, tested and constrained and they also want to understand how quickly a business can adapt if a critical supplier fails or becomes unavailable.
Resilience in this context is demonstrated through governance and visibility which ultimately has a direct impact on revenue and overall sales performance and is therefore open to interrogation by investors looking to see a return on their investment.
Governance and transparency as signals
Demonstrating understanding and progress against regulatory requirements is another key factor in influencing investor confidence as frequent compliance issues, slow audit responses or unclear ownership of controls signal fragility. Strong governance frameworks and continuous monitoring point to organisations that are prepared for scrutiny and are therefore more likely to be built for long term growth, something investors are looking to see. This includes being able to manage the risks of third party suppliers typically brought in to drive efficiency or lower costs.
Cyber transparency is equally important. Businesses that communicate clearly about incidents and remediation tend to retain trust. Those that delay or obscure information often experience greater reputational and financial impact.
Why this matters to the board
Boards are beginning to recognise that cyber resilience directly affects valuation, cost of capital and long-term confidence. Questions once confined to technical teams are now central to financial and strategic discussions, such as;
How quickly can control failures be detected? How can leaders be confident controls are working today? What happens if a critical system or supplier becomes unavailable? These questions and points of consideration are clear indicators of stability, which in a challenging investment market are important ways to stand out from the crowd.
Building value through resilience
Resilient organisations are not defined by an absence of incidents. Many trusted businesses have experienced visible failures, but what differentiates them is clarity of response, speed of recovery and evidence of continuous progress and development.
As digital dependency deepens, markets increasingly favour organisations that can operate through disruption and demonstrate control under pressure. In that environment, cyber resilience becomes part of how value is assessed.
It stops being an abstract security concept and becomes evidence of a business that is built to endure the challenges that they are inevitably going to face.