What's the cost of a data breach?
An insurance company has come up with a calculator that lets companies estimate their financial risk from data theft.
The calculator doesn't help individuals seeking to recover from identity fraud, or who are curious what the cost of restoring a ruined credit history would be.
The insurance company, Darwin Professional Underwriters, analyzed data from media reports and other sources to come up with algorithms for the calculator.
According to the tool, available online, a breach that exposes 46,000 identities will cost an organization $7.6 million on average.
That amount should give the University of California at San Francisco some pause. The school last week said a possible computer security breach may have put 46,000 campus and medical center faculty, staff and students at risk of identity fraud.
The insurance industry isn't the only one doing some counting. Forrester Research is readying a report on the cost of data breaches.
Forrester recently surveyed 28 companies that had data breaches and estimated that such a breach will cost an organization between $90 and $305 per exposed record, depending on the public profile of the breach and the regulations that apply to the organization, it said in an e-mail.
