What should our calculator tell prospects about their financial exposure?

A cyber exposure calculator should explain how different threats can translate into financial losses, rather than treat cyber risk as a single interchangeable problem. The work for Hiscox addressed a practical difficulty: business owners can readily understand the value of physical assets, but may struggle to quantify the value of their data and their cyber exposure. For a business holding customer data, the consequences may include legal, reputational and compensation costs. For another business, malware that stops operations may be the central concern. AM Best's 2025 analysis of cyber claims found that business-interruption claims are more expensive per claim than incident-response claims. Frame the calculator around the consequences relevant to each business, including businesses that do not consider themselves digital and may underestimate their exposure.

Make the financial estimate specific to the prospect by combining existing data with information about their business. The Hiscox Cyber Exposure Calculator used a model allowing more than a million permutations of data points, including business size, industry and existing security measures. Rather than returning a fixed recommendation, the tool calculated the monetary value a business could expect to lose from a cyber attack and delivered insights in real time. The practical purpose was to help owners and managers understand their exposure, consider how to manage risks to operations, reputation and customer data, and choose relevant insurance. Munich Re argued in 2025 that understanding both the underlying risk and coverage components is a prerequisite for cyber insurance. Connect the estimate to risk management and insurance choices, not just a financial figure.