Data Breach Costs — Huge Increase over 2023

IBM Security took a long, difficult, look at data breaches in 2023. The costs to businesses hit is rising significantly. Here’s an example of the damage done by the cyberattack on UnitedHealth Group’s Change Healthcare unit that happened in February of this year.

Not counting the damage to the company’s reputation and the economic costs to the company’s clients, UnitedHealthcare says losses will end up being between $2.3 billion and $2.45 billion.

That’s a huge loss and that’s this year. The Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023 deals with last year and IBM Security said last year’s data breaches set records.

"Globally, the average cost of a data breach rose to $4.45 million, a $100,000 increase from 2022," the report said. "This represents a 2.3% increase from the 2022 average cost of $4.35 million. Since 2020, when the average total cost of a data breach was $3.86 million, the average total cost has increased 15.3%."

Here’s what else the report said:

• Over half of the organizations that suffered breaches are going to increase security
• They will focus on responding to an incident, test for weaknesses and train employees
• Security based in AI will reduce costs and it will take less time to find a breach
• Just a third of the breached companies found their own breaches
• Two thirds of the discoveries came from third parties or the criminals doing the attack
• Not notifying law enforcement cost organizations $470,000 more
• The healthcare industry had the most breaches for the 13th year in a row
• The average cost per breach for healthcare firms is $11 million
• 82% of the breaches were of data stored in the cloud

IBM Security offered recommendations at the end of the report

• Security should be built into software at every step of its development
• It should be regularly tested once installed
• Data protection needs to be modernized in the cloud
• Use AI and automation to increase the speed and accuracy of finding a breach
• Know your attack zones well and practice responding to a hypothetical breach

Source link: PropertyCasualty360.com — https://bit.ly/3yBrPcc