Jonathan Greig reports on some of the significant findings in IBM’s new survey on the cost of a breach:
Businesses that fall victim to a data breach can expect a financial hit of nearly $5 million on average — a 10% increase compared to last year — according to IBM’s annual report on cybersecurity incidents.
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IBM based the $4.88 million figure on four activities: the cost to detect a breach, to notify victims, to conduct post-breach response efforts and lost business due to the breach. The costs of forensic experts, hotline support and free credit monitoring prescriptions were paired with more indirect costs like in-house investigations and potential losses of customers.
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The healthcare industry topped all industries with an average breach cost of $9.77 million — leading the way as it has since 2011. The industry that saw the largest increase in breach costs was the industrial sector — which experienced an average cost increase of $830,000 per breach over the last year.
Read more of the bad news on The Record.
Significantly, two-thirds of those experiencing a ransomware attack who contacted law enforcement did not pay ransom demands. Involving law enforcement reportedly had positive benefits in terms of cost savings of $1 million (exclusive of any ransom payment) and quicker time to identify and contain breaches.
IBM also reports that organizations that applied AI and automation to security prevention saw the biggest impact in reducing the cost of a breach, saving an average of $2.22 million over those organizations that didn’t deploy these technologies.
Related: IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024.
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