The missing discipline: Cyber Risk to Decision Engineering
How Security Leaders Turn Uncertainty into Executive Action
Cybersecurity has never been more capable — and yet, decisions still stall.
This book introduces a missing discipline in cybersecurity:
the deliberate design of cyber risk so executives can make clear, timely, and accountable decisions under uncertainty.
By Lars Birkeland
A risk that does not end in a decision is unfinished work.
Why This Book Exists
Across industries and organizations, cyber risk is correctly identified —but action is delayed.
Not because leaders don’t care.
Not because the analysis is wrong.
But because cyber risk is rarely designed to be decided.
Most cybersecurity efforts stop at awareness, reporting, or recommendation.
They fail at the decision layer — where responsibility, trade-offs, and judgment must converge.
This book names that failure — and the discipline required to fix it.
What This Book Is
- A clear articulation of Cyber Risk-to-Decision Engineering
- A leadership-level explanation of why cyber decisions stall
- A way to think about cyber risk beyond frameworks and tools
- Written for CISOs, aspiring CISOs, and executives
What This Book Is Not
- ❌ Not a framework or methodology
- ❌ Not a compliance guide
- ❌ Not a how-to manual
- ❌ Not a product pitch
This is a thinking book — designed to change how cyber risk is understood at the top.
The Missing Discipline
Cyber Risk to Decision Engineering is the discipline of deliberately designing cyber risk information to enable executives to make clear, timely, and accountable decisions under uncertainty.
It focuses not on identifying more risk,
but on engineering clarity at the decision layer —
where cybersecurity most often fails.
The Risk to Decision Pipeline
If the work does not end in a decision, it is incomplete.
This pipeline is not a process or a checklist.
It is a model for transforming technical reality into executive action.
Inside the book, you’ll explore:
- why executives don’t decide on cyber risk — and why that’s not their fault
- how decisions must be engineered, not discovered
- where cyber risk work most often collapses before action
- why recommendations fail, and options change everything
- how decision ownership reshapes the CISO role
No hype.
No silver bullets.
Just clarity where it’s been missing.
Read more about Cyber Risk to Decision here
About the Author
Lars Martin Birkeland has spent more than two decades in cybersecurity, including over a decade as a Chief Information Security Officer across multiple industries.
His work focuses on the intersection of cyber risk, executive judgment, and organizational decision-making. He is the inventor of Cyber Risk to Decision Engineering, a discipline born from repeated real-world failures at the decision layer of cybersecurity.
A Final Note
This book does not promise certainty.
It offers something more durable:
a way to design clarity when certainty is impossible.
If you’ve ever felt that cyber risk work was technically right but strategically stuck,
this book will put words to that experience.