Clearline Risk Advisory was founded by Matthew Yates in 2026 to close a gap he kept running into: companies with real technical security programs still couldn't tell their CFO or board what a cyber incident would actually cost them.
Using the FAIR (Factor Analysis of Information Risk) framework, Matthew works directly with CFOs, CROs, and boards to translate cyber exposure into the same dollar terms they use for every other risk on the balance sheet — then builds the resilience and continuity strategy that keeps the business operating through an incident, not just a report that gets filed away.
Before founding Clearline, I spent over a decade building and running enterprise cybersecurity programs — most recently as Director of Business Development and a virtual CISO, advising executive teams and boards on risk strategy, governance, and resilience. That work is what convinced me of the gap Clearline exists to close: technically sound security programs that still couldn't tell a CFO what an incident would actually cost.
Before cybersecurity, I served as a Marine Corps network operations NCO, including a deployment to Afghanistan, where accountability wasn't optional — it was the job. I hold an MBA, a master's in cybersecurity and digital forensics, a CISSP, and an active Top Secret clearance.
— Matthew Yates, Founder
Clearline Risk Advisory exists to translate cyber risk into terms business leaders can act on — so the companies we work with make resilience decisions with the same clarity and confidence they bring to every other risk on the balance sheet.
We translate cyber risk into plain, dollar-denominated terms a CFO can act on — never a color-coded heatmap standing in for an answer.
We prioritize by what a process is actually worth to the business, not by a generic best-practices checklist.
We put our name behind every number and every recommendation, and we're in the room when it matters most.
We plan and rehearse for the incident that's coming, because prevention alone was never the whole job.
We build ongoing relationships with the businesses we serve, not one-time deliverables we hand off and forget.
We use FAIR — Factor Analysis of Information Risk — an industry-standard framework for expressing cyber risk in probability-weighted dollar terms, not qualitative ratings. It's the same rigor a CFO expects from any other capital allocation decision, applied to cyber.