Average Cost of a Data Breach Reaches New High

The first half of 2022 saw a decrease in data breaches in the U.S., a decline of 4% compared to the same time in 2021. Despite this good news in the data breach arena, a new IBM Security report, which is a report has found that the average cost of a data breach across the globe has grown to it's highest high yet at an average cost of $4.35 million per breach.

This average cost per breach is an increase of $110,000 over the 2021 average found by the Ponemon Institute, the entity that conducts the IBM Security sponsored studies. This institute bases the study on analysis of actual data breaches experienced by 550 organizations around the world. This particular study captures the data breach information spanning from March 2021 to March 2022.

According to the IBM report, roughly 83% of the organizations surveyed have experienced multiple breaches over the course of the company's history. The report went on to find that about half of the costs associated with a data breach were reportedly incurred over a year after the breach occurred. This takes a major toll on businesses because they have to deal with the up front costs of a breach, the costs of beefing up their security measures to try and prevent an additional breach, and in the case of ransomware-linked breaches, paying to get the data back following a breach, and they also have costs that pop up over a year later.

Not only are businesses suffering due to rising data breach costs, but so are consumers. Over half of all companies that were impacted by a breach raised their prices on goods and services due to the expenses that come along with a breach. We as customers of a variety of businesses across the world have a real life impact and consequence following a breach -- even if our data wasn't exposed in the breach the company was hit by, our wallets will feel its affects.

The study found that the industry most impacted by data breaches is healthcare, with an average cost per breach of over double the new average at $10.1 million on average per breach. This phenomenon of the healthcare industry being the highest impacted industry for most cyber attacks is nothing new -- for 12 years, this field has been at the top of the cyber attack list.

Data breaches happen because malicious actors know that companies have valuable data. This can include financial information, personally identifiable information (PII) (a major reason why healthcare is so heavily targeted), and other unique data. Causes of a breach can include other attacks such as ransomware, where the data is stolen and then held for ransom by malicious actors, or phishing, where cyber criminals target employees or other associated members of a business and try to trick them in order to gain access to the business' systems. It is up to each business to ensure they protect themselves and their customers from a breach - stay tuned to the Tego Cyber blog for more tips on how to best protect your business against a data breach!

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