Average Cost Of Data Breaches Estimated At $4 Million Worldwide, $7 Million In The U.S.

A new study published by IBM and the Ponemon Institute sets the average total cost of a data breach at $4 million.  The study, based on a survey of 383 organizations in 12 countries, estimates that any given organization has a 26% chance of suffering a data breach involving at least 10,000 records.  In the United States, the average total cost of a breach is $7.01 million, up from $6.53 million the prior year.  For each record stolen, a data breach will cost a U.S. organization on average $221.  The study also found that data breaches were most costly in the healthcare, educational, and financial industries.  Nearly half of breaches were caused by malicious attacks (by hackers or criminal insiders), as opposed to human error or system malfunctions, which make up the rest.  Malicious breaches, unsurprisingly, also impose the highest cost on organizations.  The study also identified ways for an organization to reduce the cost of a data breach; the most effective were the implementation of an incident response team and the use of encryption extensively in the organization.  The study is available here.