P&L stands for profit and loss. It is the financial statement that summarizes revenue, costs, and resulting profitability over a period. In cyber security, P&L matters because attacks rarely stay in the technical layer: ransomware, fraud, account takeover, and service outages can all reduce revenue or increase operating costs, and those effects eventually show up in the business numbers.
Security leaders use P&L thinking to justify controls in business terms. A patching program, backup investment, or identity upgrade is not only a technical improvement; it can be measured against avoided downtime, reduced incident response expense, and lower fraud losses. Attackers also target P&L indirectly by disrupting sales, delaying production, or pressuring victims to pay. For defenders, the key is to translate cyber risk into financial impact so executives can compare protection spend with the cost of inaction.