As businesses continue to accelerate technology adoption cloud and artificial intelligence (AI), security debt – that is, the accumulated risk generated by obsolete systems, postponed solutions, unpatched vulnerabilities or under-equipped programs – has become one of the greatest threats to the resilience of companies in Spain and Europe.
Out-of-date systems, weak identity and access management, siled monitoring and alerting, and gaps in governance and oversight are just a few examples of security debt that can cause significant operational, financial, reputational, and strategic damage to organizations. For this reason, ISACA has presented a tool called Security Debt Index (SDI)analyzes the impacts of a company’s security debt, as well as different guidelines to identify, measure and quantify it, as explained in the white paper gratuitous Security Debt: The Unseen Risk Undermining Cyber Resilience.
Designed to be used in addition to existing risk assessments, the SDI model provides organizations with a composite score to analyze whether their overall level of security debt is improving or worsening, offering directional indicators that can support decision-making. When used consistently, it can reveal patterns, help compare debt trends across systems, teams or periods, and prioritize remediation where risk is material and accelerating.
The SDI takes into account three dimensions, each of them valued on a standardized scale:
- Severity: the business impact of each issue.
- Duration: the time the debt has not been resolved.
- Velocity: the speed with which new problems of the same type appear.
Furthermore, this tool also looks at how organizations can manage and reduce security debt, for example by using a risk register, incorporating security mechanisms into DevOps processes, and adopting a zero trust approach. In addition, it establishes good practices to know which risks should be addressed, postponed or shared, including:
- Mitigate risk when exposure threatens operations, compliance, or trust.
- Transfer risk through insurance, managed services or shared responsibility models when third parties can better absorb that burden.
- Accept the risk when the cost or effort exceeds the impact, always keeping the accepted debt visible, with clear responsibilities and periodic reviews.
Additionally, the resource explains how to move security debt to senior management, how regulatory and compliance frameworks play a role, and how this concept has evolved alongside technology.
“Just as technology evolves, so does the nature of security debt. The future will require organizations to combine AI and automation with robust governance, respond to increasing regulatory expectations, and ensure risk and performance information reaches senior management,” said Safia Kazi, Principal Privacy Research Analyst at ISACA. “The organizations that will be successful will be those that recognize, measure and act on security debt early, with intentionality and transparency,” he adds.
