The hidden cost of putting off security decisions

In this Help Net Security video, Hanah Darley, Chief AI Officer, Geordie AI, talks about how putting off security risk decisions creates long-term costs that often stay hidden. Drawing on her work with CISOs and security leaders, she shows how delayed choices around visibility, vulnerability management, and risk assessment lead to blind spots that grow over time.

Darley introduces the idea of visibility debt, where each quarter without insight allows shadow IT, legacy systems, and unmanaged assets to expand. Through real examples, she describes how organizations uncover large numbers of unknown workloads or vulnerabilities once tools are finally deployed, and how fixing these issues later requires more time, staff, and budget.

The video also looks at cultural and strategic effects, including initiative fatigue and weakened trust in security programs. Darley closes with practical guidance on minimum viable visibility, tracking gaps, and helping leaders understand the trade-offs of delay so decisions are made with better context.