MegaPath Unveils Risk Calculator for Estimating Likelihood of Data Breaches

 MegaPath Corporation, a provider of a variety of hosted IT services, has announced the release of its Data Breach Risk Calculator, a tool for helping organizations understand the costs and likelihood of a data breach. Using a brief survey, the calculator provides benchmarks for assessing data-breach exposure. The new tool produces three analyses including overall data breach cost as a range variable, probability of a data breach within the next year, and several subcomponents of data breach: detection and escalation, containment and remediation, information loss, business interruption, and reputation impact.

The calculator additionally provides a report explaining its methodology, guidance for interpretation of results, and tips for reducing discovered risks.

“Many businesses today, particularly SMBs, struggle to understand their risk of exposure to a potential breach,” said Dan Foster, President, Business Markets, MegaPath. “Now, with the Data Breach Risk Calculator, customers can gain insight into the estimated cost of a data breach within their organization and work with MegaPath’s teams to identify the security tools necessary to help protect their sensitive corporate data from unauthorized access.”

The calculator is based on data from a study from the Ponemon Institute that included interviews of over 700 IT and administrative professionals working in small- to medium-sized businesses within the healthcare industry. Almost all surveyed organizations had suffered a data breach during the past years. Costs of data breaches were also found to be typically underestimated regarding both financial and reputational losses.