Quantifying ISO 27001 Return On Investment (ROI) in Multinational Enterprises

For multinational enterprises operating across multiple jurisdictions and regulatory regimes, information security is a board-level risk and governance issue, not solely an IT function. It has direct implications for financial exposure, business continuity, stakeholder confidence, insurability, and procurement assurance.

Boards also increasingly compare the ongoing costs of an Information Security Management System (ISMS) with its expected annual financial impact when deciding how far to invest.

Key takeaways

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification can support cyber insurance discussions by strengthening the consistency of evidence of information security governance and risk management across the organisation.
• A mature, well-run ISMS reduces procurement effort by improving the reusability of security evidence for tenders and due diligence.
• ISO/IEC 27001 certification can support tender qualification – particularly where buyers use structured supplier security assurance – by providing a recognised baseline.
• Initial ISO/IEC 27001 certification for a small single-site organisation may cost around £3,675 – £4,425, vs. an estimated $4.44m (approximately £3.22m) global average data breach cost.
• ISO 27001 can help reduce the expected cost of incidents by improving readiness, response repeatability, and impact management.

Some organisations may view ISO 27001 as a compliance badge. However, in practice, certification indicates that an organisation has established an Information Security Management System (ISMS) with defined governance, repeatable risk processes, and auditable evidence. At enterprise scale, a consistent ISMS can reduce assurance effort, improve risk transparency, and help make incident-related costs more predictable. It also helps reduce fragmentation of controls and evidence, which is increasingly important to boards and insurers.

While no ISO standard can guarantee breach prevention, ISO 27001 can contribute to ROI in three areas: insurance outcomes, procurement efficiency, and incident cost avoidance.

With the rise in nationally significant cyber attacks, cyber insurance is often harder to secure and renew than in recent years. The era of the ‘check-box’ insurance renewal is over.

For multinational organisations, the challenge is rarely ‘do we have a control?’ but ‘can we prove it is consistently governed, implemented, and monitored across all relevant entities, regions, and third parties?’

Underwriters are increasingly focused on risk ownership, incident preparedness, and third-party risk. This is because the cost of claims can increase quickly when an incident causes business interruption or complex recovery work.

“For a multinational, the challenge is proving that security governance is identical in a branch office in Berlin as it is at head office in London.” says Victoria Kliche, Product Scheme Manager at British Assessment Bureau.

Recent ransomware and supply chain incidents show that a significant share of costs can come from disruption and reputational damage, not just technical fixes.

How ISO 27001 can influence cyber insurance outcomes

ISO 27001 does not automatically reduce premiums. However, certification can improve the insurability conversation by strengthening the quality and reusability of evidence underwriters rely on. A well-run ISMS typically provides clear evidence around governance structures, risk assessment and treatment, the controls in place, the results of internal checks, and how findings are corrected and reviewed as part of continual improvement. In underwriting terms, that can translate into fewer “unknowns” and less back-and-forth to validate basic security operating discipline.

“Management system certification can turn insurance renewal from a long data-gathering exercise into a streamlined review of business-as-usual records,” says Victoria Kliche.

For multinational organisations, underwriting questions often span multiple legal entities and territories, each with different risk profiles, controls, and regulatory obligations. A single, ISO 27001-certified ISMS can help underwriters see a more coherent, enterprise-wide risk picture.

In large-scale procurement, security due diligence is rarely a one-off exercise. Security questionnaires, supporting policies, and follow-up calls are typical, with the process repeating (often with minor wording changes) for each customer or tender.

This repetition generates a real cost. It pulls time from security teams, legal, compliance, and delivery – and it often shows up as audit and assurance hours spent responding to customer due diligence, assembling evidence packs, and securing internal sign-off.

Why security due diligence has become a recurring cost centre

Procurement teams increasingly require:

• Supplier security questionnaires and risk ratings (often customised).
• Evidence of security governance and incident handling.
• Contractual commitments covering data protection, breach notification, subcontractors, and third-party oversight (including cloud providers or offshore support).
• Artefacts such as security scorecards, the Statement of Applicability (SoA), and Information Security Risk Treatment plans.

For global suppliers, security due diligence is judged on repeatability and proof, not just completion. The cost is not only in completing questionnaires, but in managing version control and internal alignment. This can include validating that policies reflect current practice, confirming which controls apply to which entity, and coordinating approvals across security, legal, privacy, and delivery.

In multinational environments, those cycles can repeat across customers and geographies, with small differences in wording creating disproportionate clarification work.

How ISO 27001 can reduce repetition and reworking

ISO 27001 can reduce procurement friction by supporting a more consistent and repeatable approach to responding to due diligence requests. In mature ISMS environments, organisations often have reusable evidence available, such as:

• A standard description of governance (roles, committees, escalation paths, and decision-making).
• A consistent risk approach that can be summarised for customers, supported by documented information where required.
• Supplier oversight records, including how third parties are assessed, monitored, and re-reviewed.
• Evidence of operational discipline, such as training and awareness, incident response and learning, and audit outcomes and corrective actions (showing continual improvement).

Faster qualification in enterprise and public sector environments

Where customers use structured supplier security assurance processes, ISO 27001 can make it easier to pass early gates – particularly in enterprise and public sector tenders. It does not remove customer checks, but it can reduce time spent proving baseline maturity, leading to fewer clarification cycles and faster progression from initial due diligence to commercial negotiation. Beyond efficiency, it often helps to prevent the organisation from being immediately disqualified during the initial Request for Information (RFI) phase.

“In enterprise procurement, assurance effort is often the hidden cost: repeated questionnaires, evidence packs, and stakeholder sign-off across multiple functions,” says Victoria Kliche. “Certification can provide a recognised baseline that reduces duplication and clarifies what evidence is current, owned, and reviewable.”

A major financial case for ISO 27001 is reducing the expected cost of incidents. That means two things: reducing the chances of preventable incidents from occurring, and proactively reducing the impact in case something does go wrong.

According to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025, the global average cost of a data breach was $4.44m (approximately £3.22m). This is often skewed downward by SMEs, and for large enterprises, the cost could exceed $10M when business interruption and company reputation is factored in. For boards, the financial exposure is often driven by speed and coordination: how quickly an organisation detects and contains an incident, how reliably it can restore services, and how consistently it can evidence decisions and communications.

Recent ransomware and supply chain incidents have shown that costs can escalate through business interruption, complex recovery across interconnected environments, and downstream contractual consequences.

Breach costs are rarely limited to just the technical fixes that occur after the incident, often including:

• Investigation and containment costs
• External specialist support (forensics, legal, PR)
• Customer notification and support
• Operational disruption (delayed services, downtime, etc.)
• Any regulatory and contractual consequences
• Longer-term impacts (lost deals, increased scrutiny, higher assurance burden, etc.)

Because of the enterprise-wide costs, boards increasingly frame security as operational risk, not only an IT risk.

An expected loss example

Imagine you are an enterprise with an estimated 5% annual probability of a cyber security incident. If the impact of such an event is valued at £10m (considering fines, reputational damage, lost revenue and so on), the annual loss expectancy (ALE) would be: 0.05 × £10m = £500k.

The ROI question for the board would be whether the cost of maintaining the ISMS is a worthwhile investment (including internal time, governance, training, and certification audits).

As a general guide, initial ISO/IEC 27001 certification for a small single-site organisation may cost around £3,675 – £4,425, with larger or multi-site organisations typically higher. While ISO 27001 cannot prevent cyber breaches, it can lead to improved prevention and faster, repeatable responses.

Read about the cost of ISO 27001 certification.

ISO 27001 can help reduce impact and common cost drivers by improving:

• The visibility of sensitive assets and data
• Security control consistency
• Incident readiness
• Any post-incident learning

“In more complex multinational enterprises, even a modest level of improvement can help, as incidents can occur across multiple systems, subsidiaries, and suppliers,” says Victoria Kliche. “With an ISO 27001-certified ISMS in place, response can become less improvised and more repeatable.”

Related reading: How ISO 27001 can help businesses respond to data breaches.

Boards rarely need a single ROI figure – they need to judge whether the ongoing cost of the ISMS is proportionate to the organisation’s expected annual loss from incidents and the internal cost of maintaining insurability and customer trust. Using ranges rather than precise numbers helps keep this analysis realistic, especially in complex multinational environments.

A practical indicator of value is whether the drivers behind these costs become more predictable over time, such as lower renewal friction with insurers, fewer clarification cycles during procurement due diligence, and more consistent incident response across sites and subsidiaries.

ISO 27001 can help organisations make security outcomes more predictable and governable – not as a guarantee of prevention. When the organisation can demonstrate stable governance, repeatable processes, and auditable evidence across the group, the financial case strengthens, leading to fewer surprises, fewer duplicated efforts, and less volatility in high-impact events.