Cybersecurity Metrics: A Best Practices Guide

Cybersecurity metrics provide visibility into an organization’s security posture. These metrics cover various aspects of cybersecurity, including regulatory compliance, threat detection, risk management, and cybersecurity program assessment. 

Metrics should be customized for each stakeholder to address specific concerns. For example, a chief information security officer (CISO) might give more weight to general risk indicators, a security operations center (SOC) manager might concentrate on operational metrics such as mean time to detect (MTTD), and business leaders often seek metrics that show the return on security investments.

This article covers several common and essential cybersecurity metrics that organizations may use to improve their decision-making and security postures. The goal is to tell a story by translating data into meaningful narratives that drive action and uplift an organization’s cybersecurity capabilities.

Effective cybersecurity metrics share several key attributes that deliver meaningful insights and drive appropriate action. Incorporating these fundamental attributes creates metrics that remain meaningful, actionable, and aligned with the long-term objectives.

Outcome-based metrics measure results rather than activities. For example, instead of tracking the number of data loss prevention (DLP) policy violations detected, a more valuable approach measures the percentage decrease in sensitive data leaving the network without authorization. This shift emphasizes actual security improvement rather than simply counting detected violations.

Simplicity reduces ambiguity and confusion, particularly when stakeholders with different technical backgrounds consume metrics. Overly complex metrics like “quantitative patch risk score incorporating asset criticality with threat intelligence correlation” overwhelm even technical audiences. An alternative could be the percentage of patched critical systems, which immediately conveys security status more meaningfully.

High-value metrics guide the decision-making process. When a metric reveals an organization’s slow detection and response to security incidents, management can take specific actions: reassessing the process, evaluating team skills, reviewing technologies, and potentially increasing investment in response capabilities. Actionable metrics serve as catalysts for improvements rather than just being information points.

Common questions that you’ll get when presenting to management/leadership/board members are “How are our peers doing?” or “How do we compare to regulatory requirements or industry standards?” Well-designed metrics make meaningful comparisons with industry peers and established standards easier. Organizations benefit from selecting metrics that align with their industry and organizational context, such as recognizing that a nonprofit organization doesn’t require the same control environment as a financial institution. 

Industry frameworks like the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF), ISO 27001, or data normalization efforts such as the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF) provide standardized benchmarking references.

Effective metrics programs customize reporting based on audience needs and technical expertise, using formats that stakeholders can understand at a glance. Visual dashboards present key metrics in an intuitive format, as illustrated in the examples below.

The following dashboard transforms technical incident data into business-relevant insights that support executive decision-making. It enables CISOs to communicate security performance effectively to board members and other executives by focusing on metrics that demonstrate operational impact, response efficiency, and continuous improvement—all critical aspects of the organization's overall security governance and risk management strategy.

Executive dashboard

In contrast, the operational dashboard below combines real-time operational data and trend analysis. It gives SOC managers the complete picture they need to optimize team performance, allocate resources effectively, and continuously improve security operations. By tracking incidents across multiple dimensions (time, severity, category), this dashboard enables data-driven decisions about staffing, tool investments, and process improvements that directly impact security operations.

SOC manager dashboard

These visualizations show how metrics can be tailored to different audiences while maintaining the core attributes of being outcome-based, simple, actionable, benchmarkable, and audience-appropriate.

GRC metrics show a holistic view of the organization’s cybersecurity efforts, which are aligned with the business objectives and regulatory requirements.

Here are some areas of interest and example metrics.

Cybersecurity metrics should be linked to the organization’s overall strategy and goals to contribute to its success. For example, if one of the goals is a faster time to market, a secure-by-design approach needs to be implemented.

Post-deployment remediation time—the amount of time needed to fix security bugs found after deployment—is calculated by dividing the total remediation time by the number of post-deployment security vulnerabilities:

Post-deployment remediation time = total remediation time / number of post-deployment security vulnerabilities

A shorter time indicates more effective secure-by-design practices. For a 20-day remediation time and 10 post-deployment security vulnerabilities, the post-deployment remediation time would be 2 days on average per vulnerability.

Cybersecurity risk should not be treated in isolation but rather viewed as one component within an organization’s broader risk landscape, which includes financial, safety, operational, and other risk categories. Effective cybersecurity metrics recognize this integration within the larger enterprise risk framework.

Organizations gain visibility into their most pressing security concerns by tallying the total count of cybersecurity risk ratings as either critical or high severity, which assesses their exposure to significant threats.

For example, if security assessments identify 10 critical and 20 high risks across the organization, the combined metric would show 30 high-priority cyber risks requiring attention. This straightforward count provides leadership with an indicator of significant risk exposure and helps prioritize remediation efforts. Tracking this number over time also reveals whether the organization’s risk posture is improving or regressing in response to security initiatives.

The compliance dimension of cybersecurity addresses how well an organization meets regulatory requirements and industry standards. Typically, an organization’s internal audit oversees compliance metrics to consolidate information from various teams, including the cybersecurity department. Such metrics encompass cyber assurance activities, self-assessments, internal audits, and evaluations conducted by external auditors.

One useful metric is tracking the number of cybersecurity compliance deficiencies, which counts all cybersecurity-related gaps identified during formal audits, providing a direct measurement of regulatory adherence.

If an auditor identifies 15 compliance violations during an assessment, this number becomes an indicator of compliance gaps requiring remediation. The metrics’ value lies in its simplicity, as fewer deficiencies signal a stronger compliance posture. Organizations can track this metric over time to show concrete evidence of improvement in their regulatory compliance efforts and to validate the effectiveness of their control implementation.

A well-crafted ROI metric provides evidence of how cybersecurity investments reduce risks, protect assets, and help justify expenditures and secure future budget allocations.

Cybersecurity ROI expresses risk reduction in financial terms relative to security investments using a straightforward formula: 

Cybersecurity ROI = (financial cost averted - investment) / investment × 100%

Consider an organization that invests $500,000 in cybersecurity measures, including enhanced monitoring systems, staff training, and incident response capabilities. Through these investments, the organization prevents breaches and avoids regulatory fines that would have cost approximately $2,000,000. The ROI calculation shows:

Cybersecurity ROI = ($2,000,000 - $500,000) / $500,000 × 100% = 300%

$500K investment prevents $2M in potential losses; ROI = 300% ($1 invested saves $3)

This financial perspective transforms cybersecurity from a perceived cost sink to a demonstrable value-protecting investment. When communicating with executives and board members, ROI metrics provide the financial language needed to justify security programs and highlight their direct contribution to business objectives.

Preventive security controls reduce the likelihood of a cybersecurity incident by acting as barriers to block or minimize vulnerabilities. The following metrics provide insights into defense effectiveness and highlight areas that need improvement.

Network infrastructure is the backbone of most organizations' business operations. Network security metrics measure how well these critical systems are protected against threats.

The downtime reduction rate determines the percentage decrease in downtime caused by external network attacks:

Downtime reduction rate = (previous period downtime - current period downtime) / previous period downtime × 100%

For example, if an organization experienced 10 hours of network-attack-related downtime last year but only 5 hours this year, the calculation shows: (10-5)/10 × 100% = 50% reduction. This significant improvement indicates effective network security enhancements.

IAM metrics gauge an organization's effectiveness at handling user identities, controlling system access, minimizing security risks, and enabling a better user experience.

As an example, user satisfaction ratings for IAM capture how satisfied users or customers are with the organization's identity and access management processes:

User satisfaction rating = number of satisfied users / total number of users surveyed × 100%

In a survey where 90 out of 100 users expressed satisfaction with IAM processes, the satisfaction rating would be 90%. Such a high rating suggests that the IAM program successfully balances security requirements with user experience considerations.

Secure backup metrics focus specifically on the cybersecurity elements of backup processes, including access controls, encryption, and immutability. This is different from traditional IT backup policy objectives like the recovery point objective (RPO) or recovery time objective (RTO).

For example, immutable backup coverage measures the percentage of backups stored in formats that cannot be altered:

Immutable backup coverage = number of immutable backups / total number of backups × 100%

If an organization maintains 300 total backups but only 200 have immutability enabled, the coverage would be 66.67%, which suggests an opportunity to improve ransomware resilience by increasing immutable backup implementation.

Endpoint security metrics provide insights into the protection status of devices (or endpoints) like laptops, desktops, mobile devices, and servers.

Endpoint security solution coverage measures the percentage of endpoints protected by security solutions:

Endpoint security solution coverage = number of protected endpoints / total number of endpoints × 100%

With 950 out of 1,000 endpoint devices protected, the coverage would be 95%. While this high percentage would indicate good coverage, the remaining 5% of unprotected devices would represent potential entry points for attackers.

This area has become particularly important because misconfigurations represent a major security threat in cloud environments. System hardening metrics measure adherence to internal security baselines, industry benchmarks, and hardening guidelines.

The system configuration compliance rate shows the percentage of systems meeting approved security standards:

System configuration compliance rate = number of compliant systems / total number of systems × 100%

If 250 out of 300 servers meet system hardening standards, the compliance rate would be 83.33%. This metric helps identify configuration drift and prioritize hardening efforts across the environment.

Data security metrics focus on protecting information from unauthorized access and breaches. For example, the data exfiltration prevention rate measures how effective an organization is at blocking detected data theft attempts:

Data exfiltration prevention rate = number of blocked exfiltration attempts / number of detected attempts × 100%

If security tools detected 100 data exfiltration attempts and successfully blocked 80, the prevention rate would be 80%. This value shows good detection capability and prevention effectiveness, with improvement opportunities in the 20% of attempts that succeeded.

With organizations increasingly relying on cloud services, managed services, and outsourcing, TPRM metrics assess expanded cyber risk exposure. A risk-based approach should determine which vendors require a security assessment based on regulatory requirements, service criticality, and data access.

For instance, the third-party security assessment completion rate tracks the percentage of in-scope vendors that have completed security evaluations:

Assessment completion rate = number of third parties assessed / total number of in-scope third parties × 100%

With 180 of 200 vendors having completed security assessments, the completion rate would be 90%. This high rate would indicate good vendor governance, though the organization would need to follow up on the remaining 10% of vendors.

Security awareness metrics assess how effective training initiatives are at improving staff knowledge about cyber threats and prevention practices.

A metric that could be used is the phishing simulation click rate, which shows the percentage of staff who clicked on links in simulated phishing emails:

Phishing simulation click rate = number of staff who clicked / total number of staff targeted × 100%

If 100 out of 1,000 targeted staff clicked on simulated phishing links, the click rate would be 10%. This metric provides direct feedback on awareness program effectiveness and identifies needs for additional training.

The following summary table offers security practitioners a quick reference guide to the most important security categories, with examples of preventive security metrics.

Cyber operations metrics evaluate an organization’s defensive capabilities throughout the incident response lifecycle. They provide information about how quickly the organization can identify and contain threats to reduce their potential impact on business operations. The SOC manager is directly responsible for gathering, analyzing, and improving these metrics.

The cyber threat intelligence function serves a strategic and tactical role in an organization. On a strategic level, it helps security teams stay ahead of adversaries by identifying risks before they materialize. On a tactical level, it helps the SOCs manage active threats. 

One metric is the actionability rate of threat intelligence, which measures how often collected intelligence results in concrete security improvements:

Actionability rate = number of actionable threat intelligence reports / total reports collected × 100%

For instance, if an organization collects 100 threat intelligence reports monthly, but only 25 lead to actionable risk mitigation or security improvements, the actionability rate would be 25%. This relatively low percentage would suggest opportunities to improve intelligence relevance or the organization's ability to operationalize the information received.

Another metric is the indicator of compromise (IOC) coverage, which assesses how effectively security tools detect known threat indicators:

IOC coverage = number of IOCs detected by security tools / total number of IOCs from threat intelligence × 100%

When an SOC team can detect 70 out of 100 known IOCs with existing security tools, the coverage rate is 70%, which reveals potential detection gaps and helps prioritize security tooling to improve threat visibility.

Vulnerability management, closely related to patch management, focuses on how effectively and promptly an organization addresses critical and high-priority vulnerabilities to reduce risk exposure.

The critical and high-priority vulnerability remediation rate monitors the percentage of significant vulnerabilities that have been fixed within a specific timeframe:

Remediation rate = Number of critical/high vulnerabilities remediated / total critical/high vulnerabilities identified × 100%

For example, if a vulnerability management team identifies 20 critical and 10 high-priority vulnerabilities and successfully remediates 25, the remediation rate would be 83.33%, indicating an effective vulnerability management process.

Incident response metrics assess an organization's ability to detect potential security incidents in real time or near real time and swiftly take action to contain, mitigate, and resolve them. Key metrics include mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR).

MTTD measures the average time between an incident's occurrence and its discovery:

MTTD = Total time between incident occurrence and detection / total number of incidents

Consider three security incidents with different detection times:

• Incident 1: Occurred at 1:00 PM, detected at 1:44 PM (44 minutes)

• Incident 2: Occurred at 8:30 AM, detected at 10:00 AM (90 minutes)

• Incident 3: Occurred at 2:15 PM, detected at 2:25 PM (10 minutes)

The MTTD calculation would be (44 + 90 + 10) / 3 = 48 minutes. This metric directly measures detection capability and highlights areas for improvement in monitoring or alerting.

MTTR measures the average time between incident detection and initial response:

MTTR = Total time between detection and initial response / total number of incidents

For the same three incidents:

• Incident 1: Detected at 1:44 PM, response at 1:54 PM (10 minutes)

• Incident 2: Detected at 10:00 AM, response at 10:20 AM (20 minutes)

• Incident 3: Detected at 2:25 PM, response at 2:40 PM (15 minutes)

The MTTR calculation would be: (10 + 20 + 15) / 3 = 15 minutes. This metric evaluates response efficiency and helps identify bottlenecks in incident handling procedures.

The following table summarizes the categories of security operations discussed above:

For the best results, follow these approaches:

• Leverage advanced observability platforms. Platforms like Onum enable real-time visibility into security posture by filtering and enriching telemetry at the edge, then correlating it across environments. This results in millisecond-level insights that drive faster detection, smarter metrics, and improved decision-making.

• Ensure the accuracy and reliability of data. Implement processes to verify and validate the information being reported.

• Establish a clear baseline. A standardized reference point should be established to identify anomalies or measure cybersecurity progress.

• Prioritize key cybersecurity metrics. When selecting which metrics to use, consider any regulatory requirements and the organization’s context, and choose those that will drive security improvements. 

• Tie cybersecurity key performance indicators (KPIs) to business leaders. Cybersecurity becomes integrated into the organizational culture by connecting cybersecurity KPIs to leadership goals captured in the organization's scorecards.

• Continuously monitor the metrics. Many of these metrics, such as MTTD or IOC coverage, can be automatically derived using observability platforms that continuously ingest and normalize telemetry data—eliminating manual collection.

• Communicate the cybersecurity metrics. Once you have all the data gathered, the dashboards, charts, and presentation slides should be combined to tell a story that will drive business decisions. 

• Establish a reporting cadence. Organizations should have a consistent schedule for reporting these key metrics to the appropriate audience, e.g., the audit and risk committee, executive leadership meetings, etc.

With the vast array of cybersecurity metrics available, organizations must select those that align with their specific size, sector, priorities, and, most importantly, business goals. They must ensure that the chosen metrics provide actionable insights tailored to their unique needs and objectives.

It's also important to recognize that improving the maturity of cybersecurity reporting is a journey. In the initial stages, the organization will start with ad hoc and unstructured reporting of cybersecurity metrics. 

By anchoring on these key concepts and following these best practices, organizations can build a solid foundation and gradually uplift their reporting capabilities, thus improving their cybersecurity maturity over time.