The average cost of a data breach reached another record of $4.35 million and 60% of businesses chose to increase the price of their products and services to prevent the damage caused, reveals IBM research for 2022.
A successful data breach is costly to the affected organization not only in time, resources and reputation, but also in money. In addition to the costs of detecting, mitigating and cleaning up after a data breach, there are long-term costs that can plague an organization for months or even years. A report released Wednesday by IBM Security examines the impact of data breaches on a company’s bottom line.
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To create the “2022 Cost of a Data Breach Report,” IBM Security commissioned the Ponemon Institute to analyze 550 organizations affected by data breaches between March 2021 and March 2022. With more than 3,600 interviews conducted with individuals from the affected organizations, the goal was to determine the immediate and long-term costs of a breach.
Among the organizations analyzed for the survey, 85% were victims of more than one data breach during the 12-month period covered by the study. The average cost of a data breach reached an all-time high of $4.35 million this year. In the United States, the average cost was $9.44 million, the highest of any country.
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The cost of a data breach can be long-lasting. Nearly 50% of the costs analyzed by IBM Security occurred more than a year after the actual breach. Additionally, about 60% of organizations that suffered a data breach were forced to pass the cost on to customers by increasing their prices.
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Looking at how and why the breaches occurred, 45% of them were cloud- based , 19% of them occurred because a business partner was compromised , another 19% were the result of stolen or compromised credentials , and 16% were caused by phishing attacks .
Information source: techrepublic.com
