Track every expense from detection through recovery stages. Model roles, vendors, downtime, and penalties accurately. Download clean summaries that support audits and decisions fast.
| Scenario | Response hours | Downtime hours | Downtime cost/hour | Consulting hours | Extra cloud/hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minor outage, quick recovery | 6 | 1 | $800 | 0 | $40 |
| Security triage with partial degradation | 12 | 4 | $1,800 | 4 | $120 |
| Large incident with vendor support | 24 | 10 | $6,000 | 12 | $350 |
1) Response hours = triage + containment + eradication + recovery.
2) Internal labor (per role) = people × rate × (response hours × response% + post hours × post%).
3) Downtime impact = downtime hours × cost per hour × degradation factor.
4) External services = (consulting hours × rate) + forensics + legal + PR.
5) Extra cloud usage = (response hours + downtime hours) × extra cloud/hour + one-time charges.
6) Overhead = SLA penalties + (users notified × cost/user) + tooling + other costs.
7) Direct subtotal = labor + downtime + external + cloud + overhead.
8) Total (gross) = direct subtotal × (1 + contingency%).
9) Total (net) = total (gross) − estimated reimbursement (optional).
Incident response cost is rarely a single line item. It accumulates from downtime impact, internal labor, third‑party support, and extra cloud usage from logging spikes, restores, and burst capacity. Costs can continue after recovery through customer support volume and follow‑up hardening. Recording affected systems lets you express totals as cost per system, helping prioritize fixes across regions, clusters, and critical workloads.
Downtime impact is modeled as downtime hours × cost per hour × degradation factor. Use 1.00 for full outage, 0.60 for partial impairment, or 0.25 when only a subset of tenants is affected. Set cost per hour from revenue at risk, productivity loss, and credits, then run scenarios to produce a defensible range. This view explains why peak‑hour incidents can cost more than longer off‑peak disruptions.
Response hours equal triage + containment + eradication + recovery. Each role cost equals people × hourly rate × effective hours, combining response participation and post‑incident contribution. This captures coordination time, investigation depth, and postmortem work such as patch validation, runbook updates, and automation. Include after‑hours premiums if applicable. Tracking involvement percentages improves consistency between teams and reduces debates about “who spent how long.”
External services can reduce resolution time but add direct costs that arrive later. Model consultant hours, forensics fees, legal review, and communications support separately so stakeholders see what drives the invoice. Notification costs also scale quickly; $0.02 per user becomes meaningful at hundreds of thousands of messages. If regulations require rapid disclosure, budget for documentation, evidence preservation, and extended log retention to maintain chain‑of‑custody and auditability.
Exports turn calculations into repeatable reporting. Track cost per hour and cost per system to benchmark services, and compare gross versus net totals when insurance or credits apply. Over time, classify incidents by root cause and measure median and worst‑case costs. If a reliability initiative reduces downtime by one hour, the avoided cost becomes visible, supporting spend on observability, backups, drills, and incident tooling. Include contingency to reflect uncertainty and retesting cycles later.
Use a blended estimate: revenue at risk, productivity loss, and likely SLA credits. If unsure, run three scenarios (low, expected, high) and present a range rather than a single point.
Set 1.00 for a full outage. Use 0.5–0.8 for partial impairment, and 0.1–0.4 when only a small tenant set is affected. Pick the factor that best matches user impact, not engineer effort.
Different roles contribute unevenly across phases. Percentages prevent double‑counting, reflect reality, and make comparisons consistent between incidents. They also help explain why coordination roles can be expensive even with fewer people.
Yes. Post work often includes analysis, patch validation, monitoring changes, documentation, and follow‑up communications. Excluding it systematically understates cost and makes prevention investments harder to justify.
Contingency increases the gross total to cover uncertainty and rework. Insurance reimbursement reduces the net total; apply a percent and optionally a cap. Keep both assumptions documented so finance can audit them.
Include incremental compute, storage, egress, snapshots, restores, additional logging, and temporary scaling during response and downtime. If you have billing data, derive a per‑hour rate from similar past incidents.
Important Note: All the Calculators listed in this site are for educational purpose only and we do not guarentee the accuracy of results. Please do consult with other sources as well.