Economic process modeling is a way to map each work step to its financial and operational effects, not just its direct cost. It asks what a step creates, protects, or reveals: revenue, reduced risk, decision quality, flexibility, and information value. In cyber security, this matters because many controls look expensive until their hidden value is counted.
Attackers exploit weak process economics by pushing defenders toward the cheapest-looking option, such as removing verification, shortening reviews, or skipping logging. Defenders use economic process modeling to justify controls like multifactor authentication, alert triage, fraud checks, or secure approval workflows by showing how they reduce loss, preserve evidence, and improve later decisions. The method helps teams avoid false savings and identify which steps are waste, which are essential safeguards, and which produce valuable data for incident response and risk management.