Cyber Insurance Coverage Limit Estimator
How much cyber insurance is enough? For a manufacturer, the biggest part of the loss is usually the margin lost while the plant is not shipping, followed by response and rebuild costs. This estimator builds a clear, adjustable number to bring to your broker.
Your numbers
Revenue of the insured entity for the year.
Realistic days of full or equivalent lost production.
Revenue minus variable costs, as a percent. Use net income plus continuing fixed costs if that matches your policy wording.
Overtime and catch-up that makes up part of the loss.
Manual workarounds, temporary labor, expediting, air freight.
Servers, ERP and MES rebuild, consultants, replacement hardware.
Allow for estimates being wrong.
Your results
A simple planning estimate, not an actuarial or underwriting model. Real policies have retentions, waiting periods, sub-limits for business interruption, ransom, restoration and regulatory costs, and exclusions. Discuss the result with your broker and finance team.
Estimated gross loss vs outage length
Sweeps Production outage length from 1 to 60, holding your other inputs fixed.
Optional loss model from your ERP data
Ask how revenue, margin and order data from your ERP can feed a more precise loss estimate, kept on your own servers.
Optional. The tool and every export work without this. No spam.
How to use the estimator
Enter annual revenue and operating days to get a revenue per day. Choose a realistic outage length, not the best case: restoring an ERP, MES and plant servers after encryption can take many days, and customers may not accept late deliveries. Enter your contribution margin, extra expense, response and restoration costs. Decide whether you would consider paying a ransom, and whether the policy would cover it. The chart shows how the loss grows as the outage lengthens, which helps you see the value of faster recovery.
- Use finance's contribution margin, not gross margin by guess
- Run three outage lengths: short, likely, severe
- Check each cost against policy sub-limits
The method
Lost sales equal revenue per operating day times outage days, reduced by the share you can recover later through overtime and catch-up. Lost margin is lost sales times contribution margin. The gross loss adds extra expense per day, forensics, legal and notification costs, system restoration and optionally a ransom. A buffer then covers estimation error. The result is a planning figure; underwriters will also consider retentions, waiting periods and sub-limits for each cost type, which often cap parts of the loss below the headline limit.
Reading the result and common mistakes
Compare the suggested limit with quotes and with what you can afford to self-insure. A common mistake is ignoring customer penalties, lost contracts and reputational effects that policies may not cover. Another is forgetting contingent business interruption, where a key supplier or IT provider is the one attacked. If the estimate is far above available limits, that is a signal to invest in recovery speed, which cuts the largest cost directly.
- Include dependency on key suppliers and service providers
- Check waiting periods before the cover starts
- Faster recovery lowers the biggest loss component
- Revisit after major changes to revenue or systems
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should I assume the outage lasts?
Use more than one scenario. Many ransomware events with ERP and plant impact take one to several weeks to fully restore. Use your tested recovery times as the base and add margin for surprises, then compare the three scenarios.
Should I include a ransom payment?
That depends on your policy, legal advice and company stance. Many policies limit or exclude ransom, and payments may raise legal and sanctions issues. The estimator lets you view the number with and without it.
Why use contribution margin instead of profit?
Fixed costs continue during an outage, so the loss is closer to revenue minus the variable costs you save. Policies often define covered loss as net income plus continuing expenses. Confirm the exact wording with your broker.
Is this enough to set my policy limit?
It is a good starting point. Final limits also depend on price, retention, sub-limits, exclusions and your risk appetite. Use the numbers to have a specific conversation with your broker and finance team.
If you want to model the loss using your actual ERP order and margin data on your own servers, Netray can help set that up. The calculator needs no data from you.
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