Washington: A technique developed by Indian American computer scientist Anoop Singhal will minimise chances of hackers stealing confidential corporate data, including health and financial records.

"We analyse all of the paths that attackers could penetrate through a network and assign a risk to each component of the system," said Singhal. "Decision makers can use our assigned probabilities to make wise decisions and investments to safeguard their network."

Singhal and his colleagues at George Mason University, which developed the new analysis technique based on 'attack graphs', have applied for a patent.

Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are addressing these concerns by applying security metrics to computer network pathways.

Once inside a network's firewall, for a seemingly mild-mannered purpose as posting an image to a file transfer protocol (FTP) site, a hacker can travel through the network through a variety of routes to hit the jackpot of valuable data.

Besides hardware, the hacker can break in through software on the computers, especially file-sharing applications that have been blamed for some major data breaches recently.