U.S. average — an all-time high
The average cost of a breach at a U.S. organisation, and the reasonableness check this calculator measures itself against.
IBM 2025 ›Size band —
Sensitive files outside their control
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every one a permanent liability until it can be revoked
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What SuperFile costs them
“Best value” is simply whichever plan leaves the most money behind, and on savings alone that is usually the cheapest one that does the job. Higher tiers are bought for capability this model does not price — MAP view to see every copy, the full share-and-unshare record, single sign-on, and the admin control a security review will insist on. Sell those on the requirement, not on this number.
What they save every year
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Illustrative. Anchored on IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2025; size bands are an exposure model, not IBM figures.
Every assumption behind those numbers
Change anything here and the chain above moves. Replace them with the organisation's own data before anyone signs anything.
The files
How the document estate is sized. Nobody counts their files, so these are the two numbers worth arguing about first.
The breach
One breach does not expose the whole estate — this is the bridge between a file count and a credible loss. And files taken as SuperFiles cannot be opened, so most of what is left never becomes a reportable incident at all.
Documents already out
The exposure a breach model never counts: files that have already left over the years and cannot be recalled. Only SuperFile can pull these back — this is the part of the value nothing else on the market addresses.
People who leave
Every departure takes copies with it — the deck on a laptop, the folder in personal cloud, the attachments in a personal inbox. Off-boarding closes the account; it has never closed the documents. Revocation does, and single sign-on is what makes it instant.
Files sent outside
Documents that go to counsel, auditors, vendors and clients every year and simply stay there — readable long after the engagement ends. This is the supply-chain half of document exposure, and nothing else recalls it either.
Everyday leaks
The common ones — a file to the wrong address, a link left open, someone who left and kept a copy.
Time and spend
Compliance on the files Enterprise
Proving control of documents to an auditor, producing them for a legal matter, and standing in front of a regulator. Fixed per organisation rather than per seat — a 250-person regulated business carries nearly what a 2,000-person one does. Enforcement here means a finding without a breach (a failed audit, a missing control); the fines that follow an incident are already inside the per-record cost above, and counting them twice is the easiest way to lose an argument with a CFO.
The deal
Ongoing return year 2 on—
First year after setup—
Pays for itself in—
NPV over 3 yrs—
Size bands and illustrative exposure
A commercial segmentation for conversation, not a published finding. IBM does not say headcount equals breach cost — these ranges are an exposure model. The one hard anchor is the $10.22M U.S. average.
What price still works
Yearly return at each price and breach probability. Your inputs are outlined — anything green sits inside what their own numbers support.
Priced above their case · Breaks even · Saves money
Illustrative, in USD, on an expected-value basis. SuperFile is credited only with document exposure — it does not claim to stop ransomware downtime, wire fraud or credential theft.
Where these numbers come from
One hard anchor, and an exposure model built on top of it. Both are labelled so nobody has to guess which is which.
—Checked against the IBM 2025 U.S. average of $10.22M.
What a breach costs
PublishedIBM Cost of a Data Breach 2025Healthcare
The most expensive sector, year after year. Loaded by the Healthcare profile.
IBM 2025 ›Global average
All industries worldwide — well under the U.S. figure. For non-U.S. organisations, not as a discount on a U.S. one.
IBM 2025 ›
What $10.22M does and does not cover.
It is the cost of handling an incident: detection and escalation, response, business interruption, lost customers, regulatory penalties, legal expenses, notification and recovery. It is not what the escaped documents are worth for the rest of their life. A file that leaves without control keeps costing after the incident closes — copied, resold, re-leaked, produced in litigation years later. That gap is what persistent control and revocation address, and this calculator does not attempt to price it. Every number here is the conservative one.
Why the reduction is high: taking the files is not the same as having them.
Most of what makes a breach expensive is triggered by data being usable — notification, credit monitoring, regulatory response, litigation. Nearly every U.S. state breach-notification statute carries an encryption safe harbour: data that cannot be read, where the key was not taken with it, generally is not a reportable breach. A SuperFile that leaves the building opens for nobody, and can be revoked afterwards. That is why the default credits SuperFile with stopping most of the document-driven cost rather than a token share.
What it still does not stop, and why the figure is not 100%: an attacker inside an authorised user's live session, screenshots and photographs of an open document, sensitive data living somewhere other than a file, and everything non-document — ransomware downtime, wire fraud, credential theft. Safe-harbour wording also varies by state and by regulator. Lower the number for any organisation where those routes dominate.
When it goes badly
Stress caseCompany filings & regulatorsUnitedHealth · Change Healthcare
2024 direct-response costs — loans, network restoration, notifications and increased care expenditure. A mega-event: stress-test with it, never base-case with it.
UnitedHealth 10-K ›Equifax settlement
2019 minimum global settlement with the FTC, CFPB and states; the potential maximum reached $700M with up to $425M for consumer relief.
FTC / CFPB ›CNA Financial ransomware
2021 reported ransom payment — and a cost SuperFile would not prevent, which is what the document-only credit exists to keep honest.
SEC statement ›How to argue with this. Three numbers decide everything: files per employee, the share that are sensitive, and the share caught in one breach. If a prospect thinks 5,000 files a head is high, halve it — the chain updates and the worth-up-to figure moves with it. Knowing where that line sits is worth more in the room than a big number nobody believes.