ROI Brief

Railguard ROI: 4‑Week Pilot → Annual

TL;DR: Pilots are designed to pay for themselves by either (a) avoiding one P1, or (b) saving 40–80 engineer‑hours through policy enforcement, audit‑ready receipts, and CI/CD time saved.

Baseline Formulas

Incident Avoidance Value

(Historical P1 rate per quarter) × (Cost per P1) × (Probability reduction)

Example: 1 P1/qtr × $120k × 0.5 ≈ $60k avoided.

Engineer Time Saved

(Hours saved/week) × (loaded cost/hr) × (weeks)

Example: 10h/wk × $140/hr × 4w ≈ $5.6k.

Audit Time Saved

(Hours saved on evidence) × $140/hr

Example: 60h SOC2 evidence × $140/hr ≈ $8.4k.

Pilot Success Criteria
  • ≥95% policy precision on top 3 routes (monitor‑only)
  • 100% of calls produce cryptographically signed receipts (Ed25519) with SIEM export
  • One low‑risk route in enforce by Day 30 (or free extension)
Week‑by‑Week Breakdown

Week 1

Policy packs enabled, receipt verifier running locally; SIEM export.

Week 2

Precision & latency checks (≤20ms p95 governance overhead).

Week 3

Enforce a low‑risk route; rollback plan documented.

Week 4

Exec readout: ROI, precision, incidents detected, next‑step plan.

Annual Value Map

Foundation

$150k/yr

Evidence + guardrails across 1–3 teams; reduce audit toil & incident exposure.

Growth

$350k/yr

Adds custom policies + SIEM integrations; broader coverage, fewer review bottlenecks.

Enterprise

$750k/yr

On‑prem/air‑gapped, HSM, 99.99%—for regulated workloads.

FTE Equivalence

0.7–1.5 senior security FTEs — without hiring, covering ongoing policy ops, evidence collection, integration work, and audit preparation.

Ready to Prove ROI?

Start with a 4-week pilot ($25k Foundation, $50k Growth) — 100% creditable to annual contract.

Railguard ROI: 4‑Week Pilot → Annual | Railguard AI | Railguard AI