Cybersecurity ROI Calculator

A cybersecurity ROI calculator is a useful tool for evaluating the effectiveness of a cybersecurity solution for your organization. It measures the impact of risks, the likelihood of incidents, and the overall costs of implementing a solution.

Calculating Cybersecurity ROI: An Overview

How is cybersecurity ROI different from traditional ROI?

Determining the ROI of cybersecurity investments is frustrating for everyone. Even if you have an unlimited budget, you still want to ensure that your spending effectively protects your assets. Cybersecurity doesn’t produce additional income, so traditional ROI methods aren’t effective.

Instead, cybersecurity ROI focuses on risk reduction and cost avoidance – the value of something less likely to happen because you invested in cybersecurity solutions. Cybersecurity ROI is an attempt to quantify the cost of cybersecurity solutions with the expected security improvement.

How to use a cybersecurity ROI calculator

Cybersecurity ROI calculators can identify if specific solutions are worth it. Each calculator may be slightly tailored based on the specific problem a cybersecurity solution is solving. It can provide estimates for you about potential losses and the probability of cyber incidents occurring.

Generally speaking, these are the steps of using a cybersecurity ROI calculator:

Identify potential losses of a cyber incident
Estimate the probability of the cyber incident happening
Calculate the savings from implementing a cybersecurity solution
Subtract the costs of the investment

Why conduct cybersecurity ROI?

ROI can help align your cybersecurity strategy with business goals. Stakeholders like to know how investments contribute to overall organizational success. Some factors that can benefit ROI analysis include:

Meeting regulatory requirements
Combating the current threat landscape
Improving existing security posture
Avoiding the costs of potential breaches
Reducing incident response time

What to measure when determining cybersecurity ROI?

What to measure will vary between companies and industries. The best way to find what to measure is to conduct a high-quality risk assessment. It identifies your most critical assets (like customer data) and assesses their risks. The information from a risk assessment can prioritize what you should consider in a cybersecurity ROI analysis.

You should also consider the costs associated with implementing a cybersecurity solution. Some of these costs include:

Implementation and maintenance expenses
Data losses
Training investments
Vendor management
Lost productivity and revenue during downtime

Best practices for calculating cybersecurity ROI

Conduct high-quality risk assessments

A thorough risk assessment informs a strong ROI analysis. Historical data can provide better accuracy on the risk probability and the costs associated with security incidents.

Use ROI measures consistently

Consistent use of the same ROI measurement method is crucial for comparing alternatives. For example, if you consider the cost of ongoing maintenance for one solution but don’t for the other, then you’re going to have misleading results.

You should also ensure that ROI measures are written into your security policy. This ensures consistency even if there is an employee change within your organization.

Regularly review ROI

Threats are constantly evolving, so your organization should review investments to ensure they are still relevant. This can help you ensure that your cybersecurity solutions are adapting to emerging threats.

Why is a Cybersecurity ROI Calculator Relevant Now?

Organizations face growing pressure from stakeholders to justify cybersecurity investments. People need reassurance that they are investing in the right tools to protect the organization’s systems and assets. Cybersecurity ROI calculators can help provide data to prove the value of a cybersecurity solution.

When should you calculate cybersecurity ROI?

Cybersecurity ROI calculations should happen before investing in a cybersecurity solution. If you don’t currently have any cybersecurity ROI, you can start now. It can help form a baseline for future investments.

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After investing in a cybersecurity solution, you want to make sure that you are still getting your expected ROI. Follow-up assessments are useful to determine if a solution is working in your favor.

What are the benefits of a cybersecurity ROI calculator?

Cybersecurity ROI calculators can simplify decision-making by using historical data to measure the impacts of evolving risks and the effectiveness of tools. There are 3 main benefits of using a cybersecurity ROI calculator:

Efficient resource allocation: Investments are directed toward cybersecurity solutions with the highest impact on risk reduction and cost avoidance.
Improves communication: Stakeholders can see the clear financial benefits of cybersecurity tools.
Enhances decision-making: Informed decisions are easier with accurate cybersecurity ROI calculations.

How to Use Flare’s Cybersecurity ROI Calculator for Account and Session Takeover Prevention

Why use Flare’s cybersecurity ROI calculator?

Session hijacking allows attackers to bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA) completely. It’s a significant issue that organizations need to face. The Flare Account and Session Takeover Prevention ROI calculator can provide insights into the estimated number of end-user accounts exposed to session hijacking.

The calculator is broken down by industry, so you can see the most relevant stats facing your organization. The ROI calculator can also help you identify estimated annual exposure costs – the potential losses of session hijacking and account takeovers.

A step-by-step guide to using Flare’s cybersecurity ROI calculator

Choose your industry. The options include:
- Social media
- Large productivity SaaS & cloud
- Entertainment and streaming
- Video games
- E-Commerce
- Legacy Finance
- Fintech
- Crypto
- Gambling
- Travel & hospitality
- Other
Enter how much a single account takeover costs your company.
Select the number of monthly active users of your application.
That’s it! The calculator will reveal the estimated exposure cost annualized and the estimated ROI annualized of implementing Flare.

Tips on how to use Flare’s cybersecurity ROI calculator

What if I don’t know how much a single account takeover costs my company?

We recommend setting the default to $100. This is a conservative estimate since 47% of account takeovers cost over $100 per account. On average, ATO incidents cost between $50-$200 per account.

The actual cost for your company will depend on your industry, fraud risk exposure, and resources spent on investigations.

How is “Monthly exposed accounts” calculated?

Flare tracks over 100 widely used web applications, and our figures are based on newly infected devices with infostealer malware in the past month. Learn more about how we calculate monthly exposed accounts.

How is “Estimated ROI” calculated?

Estimated ROI is calculated by comparing the annual ATO exposure cost with the cost of Flare’s Account and Session Takeover Prevention (ASTP) solution.

The annual ATO exposure cost is calculated by multiplying the monthly exposure cost by 12. Meanwhile, the Flare solution cost is based on the number of end-users in your application.

The estimated ROI also assumes that your organization will reduce the likelihood of exploitation by enforcing password resets and revoking active sessions of flagged accounts.