14 DAY TRIAL // A global study commissioned by IBM Security highlights that the average cost of a data breach has exceeded $4.2 million, possibly due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to Security Week.
The study examined 500 organizations worldwide between May 2020 and March 2021. The authors of the report reviewed actual data breaches and assessed the cost of such security incidents.
In terms of the scale of the attacks, 14 companies have been identified to have suffered a major data breach, with the costs ranging from $52 million for breaches involving more than 10 million records to $401 million for breaches involving more than 65 million records. All factors, such as technical, legal, regulatory, loss of productivity of employees, brand equity, and consumer losses were included.
The number of days required for organizations to identify and contain a breach was 7 days longer than the previous year, averaging 287,7 days. The median cost of a data breach grew by roughly 10% over the previous year, from $3.86 million to $4.24 million. For organizations that enhanced their cybersecurity, the cost of data breaches was substantially lower.
However, organizations that did not apply the most recent cybersecurity innovations, such as automation, artificial intelligence (Ai), cloud security, and zero trust principles, paid a substantially greater price for data breaches. The most significant expense for organizations impacted by data breaches was the loss of business, that accounted for over $1.6 million or 38% of the total cost of data breaches. According to IBM, the lost business costs included lost income due to system outages, costs of acquiring new businesses due to a diminished reputation, and increased customer turnover.
One of the top benchmark reports in the cybersecurity field discloses troubling findings
Another interesting finding from the research is that WFH is responsible for a $1 million increase in the cost of data breaches. Moreover, companies with more than half of their employees working from home were able to contain a breach within 58 days.
It was discovered that nearly half of the breaches reviewed entailed the exposure of personal information (PII). The average cost per record of PII records was $180, while the average overall cost per record was $161, both of which were higher than the previous year's figures with a median of $146.
The healthcare industry incurred the greatest average cost of a data breach, $9.23 million, for the 11th consecutive year, up from $7.13 million the year before. On the other hand, the average cost of a data breach in the energy industry has decreased from $6.39 million to $4.65 million over the same period. According to the analysis, ransomware attacks accounted for around 8% of the incidents examined, with an average cost of $4.62 million per incident.