Security leaders are under increasing pressure to prove that their defenses actually work. Board members and stakeholders want to see measurable progress, yet most metrics available to CISOs today don’t quite fit that need.
Reporting on tool uptime, alert volumes, and patch counts shows activity without really offering assurance. These metrics show what’s been done, not how much safer the organization truly is.
Threat-led Defense promises to change that. This approach allows security leaders to align defensive coverage directly to adversary behaviors most likely to result in the probability of an attack. It provides a quantifiable view into defensive effectiveness and efficiency by focusing on how well you can or cannot defend against the latest attack.
Each of the following metrics tells a simple but important story. Together, they show whether your defenses are working, whether your coverage focuses on the right threats, and where there may be stack overlap. That’s how you turn security performance into clear, defensible metrics and actions that boards understand and trust.
At its core, the Confidence Score answers a clear question: “How confident are we that we can defend against the threats that matter most in our organization today?”
To answer this question accurately, we need to define a few important inputs first:
Your Confidence Score is a number derived from comparing defined Threat Profiles against your Defensive Stacks using a Coverage Map.
That means that instead of measuring your tool usage or how many alerts you generate, you can report on how well you’re protected against the threats that matter most.
For security leaders reporting to the board, the Confidence Score becomes the single headline metric that links operational activity, from detection engineering to control tuning, to business-level assurance. It shows progress over time as gaps are closed and the threat landscape shifts.
The Confidence Scores are calculated per segment(cloud, subsidiaries, endpoint) and aggregated with a weighted Coverage Map that reflects business importance and exposure. This rollup yields one defensible number a CISO can present, an evidence-based view of residual cyber risk after control coverage and effectiveness are accounted for.
Confidence is only as strong as the coverage behind it. Threat-specific coverage measures how well your existing controls detect the tactics and techniques that are most relevant to your organization’s threat profile. It goes beyond generic ATT&CK TTP alignment by showing exactly how an attacker executes a (Sub-)Technique.
This level of insight is powered by Tidal Cyber’s NARC AI Engine,s, which not only parses procedures from threat intelligence but translates ATT&CK techniques and procedures into coverage maps and actionable evidence of defensive capability.
For example, rather than saying a tool “covers credential dumping,” the map can show that it specifically detects the LSASS dump variants used by FIN7 or ALPHV. That precision helps security teams focus tuning, validation, and investment on the procedures that actually threaten the environment.
For CISOs, threat-specific coverage becomes a practical way to demonstrate continuous improvement. When you can show that your coverage against a priority threat rose from 60% to 80% after tuning EDR or log analytics, that’s measurable proof of progress. These metrics turn detection engineering outcomes into business outcomes with evidence that the organization is measurably safer, not just busier.
Even mature security programs struggle with redundant coverage. Multiple tools often detect or block the same behaviors, creating overlapping capabilities that inflate costs without meaningfully improving protection. Overlap reduction measures how much of your defensive stack provides unique value and how much can be consolidated or tuned for efficiency.
Tidal Cyber’s Coverage Maps make these redundancies visible. By mapping every detection and control to ATT&CK TTPs and adversary behavior, security teams can see where two or more tools defend against the same (Sub-)Techniques
This allows CISOs to quantify redundant spend, simplify their architecture, and reallocate budget toward genuine coverage gaps. This can help organizations cut tool overlap and redundancy by 40 percent, demonstrating they already meet TTP coverage requirements with existing tools.
From a reporting standpoint, overlap reduction ties directly to ROI. Demonstrating that you retired duplicative controls without introducing new gaps can help improve operational efficiency and cost discipline.
Board members don’t need a list of tools or a map of detections. They need proof that security investments are reducing risk as well as residual risk. A concise, data-driven report built around the three metrics below supports this. It shows progress in measurable terms, connects security performance to business outcomes, and supports clear, confident communication at the executive level.
Here’s what to include:
One Tidal Cyber customer faced a familiar challenge: their security team needed to reduce risk exposure but lacked the budget for new infrastructure. By adopting a threat-led defense approach powered by Tidal’s platform, they gained the visibility to act with precision instead of expansion.
Using Coverage Maps and Confidence Scores, the team identified 42 high-impact coverage opportunities where simple tuning or control validation could close meaningful gaps. Rather than investing in additional tools, they reconfigured existing detections and streamlined overlapping coverage.
The result was a measurable improvement in overall protection confidence and efficiency, reducing risk without increasing spend.
The outcome provided clear business value. The organization realized between $380,000 and $731,000 in annual productivity gains, cut detection and response time by roughly two-thirds, and strengthened their defensive posture across the techniques most relevant to their threat profile.
This is what the quantifiable, measurable approach to Threat-led Defense looks like for a CISO. Constant progress, validated coverage, and board-ready proof of ROI, all achieved through the smarter alignment of existing tools and resources.
Tidal Cyber is the first true Threat-Led Defense platform built to flip the traditional defensive model by putting real adversary behavior at the center of your defense strategy.
By mapping techniques, sub-techniques, and procedures to ATT&CK, we reveal exactly where you’re exposed and how attackers actually operate. It’s a level of precision you’ve never had before, empowering your security team to proactively reduce risk and optimize high-impact security investments.
Threat-Led Defense is Tidal Cyber’s unique implementation of Threat-Informed Defense, enhanced with procedure-level granularity to make CTI more relevant and actionable.