Actionable recommendations

From Insights to Execution in One Click

Intelligence without action is expensive noise. Qatalis Actionable Recommendations automatically converts cyber exposure data into prioritized action plans with clear owners, timelines, and ROI calculations—ending the gap between “what we know” and “what we do.”

Benefits: Why Recommendations Must Be Actionable, Not Academic

End Analysis Paralysis

Boards struggle to translate cybersecurity information into actionable decisions, with 71% believing funding is adequate despite only 39% characterizing their oversight as proactive. Actionable Recommendations eliminates this disconnect by presenting every finding with three components: the risk, the recommended action, and the business justification—enabling immediate decision-making.

Automatic Delegation to the Right Person

Most cyber risk platforms generate generic “recommendations” that land on the CISO’s desk—even when the action requires CFO budget approval, Board governance, or CHRO policy changes. Qatalis automatically assigns each recommendation to the appropriate executive based on domain and authority, with escalation paths if action isn’t taken within defined timelines.

ROI-Driven Prioritization

Executives face dozens of potential security improvements. Which ones matter? Actionable Recommendations quantifies each action’s financial impact:

Risk Reduction: How much does this action reduce potential loss?
Cost to Implement: What’s the total investment required?
ROI Ratio: What’s the return on security investment?
Regulatory Value: Does this action satisfy compliance requirements?

This enables data-driven resource allocation instead of emotional or political decision-making.

Pre-Integrated with Governance Workflows

Effective cyber governance requires that decisions to prioritize cost, features, or speed to market over security must be made transparently, with clear ownership by the CEO and Board. Actionable Recommendations creates automatic audit trails: each recommendation shows who saw it, when they saw it, whether they acted or deferred, and their stated rationale—providing the transparency regulators demand.

Benchmarked Against Industry Best Practices

Recommendations aren’t generic “implement MFA” advice. Each suggestion is benchmarked against:

Peer companies in your sector
Regulatory frameworks applicable to your operations
Scientific research on control effectiveness (from Aalto University collaboration)
Recent incident data showing what controls would have prevented real breaches

This contextualization helps boards understand not just what to do, but why it matters specifically to their organization.

How It Works: From Data to Delegation in Four Steps

Step 1: Risk Identification via D3C

The platform continuously analyzes data from all sources:

External OSINT revealing new exposures
Internal security event logs showing vulnerability patterns
Regulatory developments creating new requirements
Competitive intelligence showing peer company incidents

The PESTEL+ algorithm identifies not just technical vulnerabilities, but strategic gaps affecting governance, compliance, operations, and reputation.

Step 2: Recommendation Generation

For each identified risk, AI generates:

The Action:

Specific, concrete step required (not vague advice like “improve security”)
Example: “Implement multi-factor authentication for all finance department users within 30 days”

The Business Justification:

Why it matters: “Finance department credentials were found on dark web forum; MFA would block unauthorized access even with compromised passwords”
Regulatory impact: “Satisfies DORA ICT access control requirement; demonstrates reasonable security measures for audit defense”
Financial impact: “Implementation cost: €35K; Potential data breach cost if not implemented: €2.8M (average finance sector breach, scaled to your organization)”
ROI calculation: 8000% return (€2.8M risk reduction / €35K cost)

The Delegation Path:

Primary owner: CIO (implementation authority)
Budget approver: CFO (if cost >€25K)
Governance oversight: Audit Committee (quarterly review)
Escalation trigger: If not started within 14 days, escalate to CEO

Supporting Evidence:

Link to dark web credential discovery (timestamped)
Reference to DORA Article 15 requirement
Benchmark showing 89% of peer firms already implemented MFA
Case study of competitor breach that MFA would have prevented

Step 3: Prioritization & Scheduling

Recommendations are automatically ranked by:

Urgency Scoring (0-100):

Regulatory deadline proximity (weight: 40%)
Exploit availability for identified vulnerability (weight: 30%)
Business impact severity (weight: 20%)
Stakeholder visibility / reputation risk (weight: 10%)

Resource Requirements:

High (requires budget approval, multi-quarter implementation)
Medium (single-quarter project, standard budget)
Low (configuration change, minimal cost/time)

Interdependencies:

Some recommendations must be completed before others
Platform automatically sequences actions and suggests parallel vs. sequential execution

Step 4: Execution Tracking & Evidence

Once accepted, each recommendation:

Appears on assigned executive’s dashboard with countdown timer
Sends reminders at 25%, 50%, 75% of allocated timeline
Tracks completion status (Not Started / In Progress / Completed / Deferred)
Requires documentation if deferred (e.g., “Risk accepted: competitors also lack this control; implementing in Q3 instead”)
Creates audit trail showing: who assigned, who approved, who implemented, timeline, and outcome

Completion of recommendations directly updates relevant Meters:

Implementing MFA improves Human-Factor Meter (Behavior component)
Completing DORA third-party assessments improves Policy-Resonance Meter
Fixing detected exposures improves Competitiveness Exposure Radar

This creates a closed-loop governance system: identify risk → recommend action → delegate execution → verify completion → measure improvement.

Use Case: Hong Kong Bank Transforms Incident Response Using Actionable Recommendations

The Challenge

A Hong Kong retail bank with 200 branches faced recurring security incidents despite significant cybersecurity investment. With Cap. 653 enforcement requiring 12-hour incident reporting and annual cybersecurity assessments, the bank needed to demonstrate not just detection capability, but documented remediation of identified issues.

Their problem: security tools generated hundreds of alerts weekly, but no clear prioritization or action plans. The CISO’s team spent 60% of their time triaging alerts instead of fixing root causes. The board received quarterly reports showing “273 vulnerabilities identified” but had no visibility into which mattered or what actions were needed.

The Implementation

Qatalis Actionable Recommendations deployed in August 2025:

Initial Assessment (Week 1-2):

Platform analyzed:

18 months of security event logs
273 open vulnerabilities from multiple scanning tools
12 previous security incidents
Current compliance status against Cap. 653 requirements

Recommendation Generation (Week 3):

Platform generated 47 prioritized recommendations, automatically categorized:

Critical (8 actions, 30-day deadline):

“Patch identified remote code execution vulnerability in core banking system (affects customer data for 450K accounts; exploit code publicly available; estimated breach cost: HKD 78M; patch cost: HKD 180K; ROI: 43,333%)”
- Assigned to: CIO
- Requires approval from: CTO, CFO (system downtime during patch)
- Regulatory impact: Prevents potential data breach requiring 12-hour Cap. 653 notification
“Implement network segmentation between branch networks and core systems (identified as root cause in 3 of last 5 incidents; estimated implementation: HKD 2.4M; estimated breach prevention value: HKD 35M; ROI: 1,458%)”
- Assigned to: CIO
- Requires approval from: CFO (capital expenditure >HKD 1M)
- Regulatory impact: Demonstrates “reasonable security measures” for audit defense

High Priority (15 actions, 90-day deadline): Including employee security awareness training (affects Human-Factor Meter), third-party vendor security assessments (Cap. 653 supply chain requirement), and multi-factor authentication rollout.

Medium Priority (24 actions, 6-12 month timeline): Strategic improvements including security architecture modernization, enhanced monitoring capabilities, and compliance automation.

The Execution

September-November 2025:

All 8 Critical recommendations completed within 30 days
CIO reported to board: “For the first time, we know exactly what to fix and why it matters in business terms. The ROI calculations made budget approvals instantaneous.”
CFO approved HKD 2.4M network segmentation project in single meeting after seeing “estimated breach prevention value: HKD 35M”

December 2025-March 2026:

14 of 15 High Priority recommendations completed
Human-Factor Meter improved from 58 → 69 through employee training (Recommendation #7)
Detection latency reduced from 4.8 hours → 1.9 hours through monitoring enhancements (Recommendation #12)

The Outcome

By Cap. 653 enforcement (January 1, 2026):

Regulatory Compliance:

Demonstrated completion of 22 specific security improvements in 5 months (vs. previous ad-hoc approach with no documentation)
Provided Commissioner’s Office with audit trail showing: 47 risks identified → prioritized → assigned → completed, with timestamped evidence for each step
Met 12-hour incident reporting requirement with 1.9-hour detection latency

Operational Improvement:

Security incidents reduced 71% (from avg. 2.8/month to 0.8/month)
CISO team time reallocation: from 60% alert triage / 40% strategic work to 20% triage / 80% strategic work
Board meeting efficiency: Quarterly cyber discussions focused on strategic decisions instead of vulnerability counts

Financial Impact:

Prevented estimated HKD 78M data breach (Recommendation #1 addressed critical vulnerability before exploit)
Avoided HKD 5M Cap. 653 penalty by demonstrating proactive governance
Reduced cyber insurance premium 24% (HKD 1.8M annual savings) by showing measurable risk reduction
Total investment in all 47 recommendations: HKD 8.5M; estimated risk reduction value: HKD 245M; effective ROI: 2,882%

Cultural Transformation:

The CFO noted: “Cybersecurity used to be a cost center where the CISO asked for money and we hoped for the best. Now every security investment has a clear ROI calculation. When we see ‘spend HKD 180K to prevent HKD 78M breach,’ approval is obvious. This transformed security from a technical burden into a strategic asset.”

Key Innovation

When the platform identified that 3 of the last 5 incidents shared network segmentation as root cause, it didn’t just recommend “improve network security.” It calculated the cost of the incidents that had occurred (HKD 12M total), projected forward the cost of future incidents without remediation (HKD 35M over 3 years), presented the segmentation implementation cost (HKD 2.4M), and calculated ROI (1,458%). This business case—automatically generated from incident data—turned a technical recommendation into an executive-level strategic decision.