Just how much are you losing? Costs of a Cybersecurity breach

It is no surprise that data breaches can be a costly thing to endure, but just how much are you losing? Reports from Verizon and IBM, along with other groups, have been released, showing statistics on just how severe a data breach can be. This article aims to break down these statistics and explain what they mean and how important it is to protect your business from becoming another statistic. 

The average cost spent as a result of a data breach in 2019 was an astounding amount of $3.92 million, representing a 12% increase from the previous year. Healthcare, on average, is the costliest industry to resolve data breaches at $6.45 million per breach. This is 65% more than data breaches in other sectors. To further break these numbers down, on average, the size of a data breach is 25,575 records. It will usually cost a company $150 per record to resolve the breach, but for healthcare companies, it costs $429 per record. Mega breaches, although rarer, do still happen. A mega breach is a breach compromising over 1 million records. In 2019, $42 million was spent on average on mega breaches of over 1 million records, and $388 million was the average cost spent on mega breaches of over 50 million records. 

Luckily, there are ways to help combat breaches to save companies millions of dollars. Security automation is the automatic handling of security operations such as detecting, investigating and remediating cyber threats, reducing the need for human intervention. The use of security automation has saved companies an average of $2.51 million per breach. With $6 trillion expected to be spent world-wide annually by 2021 on cybersecurity damages, automation is an excellent method for keeping cyber threats at bay.  

Money is not the only thing at risk from a data breach.  A business that suffers a data breach typically sees stunted business growth as most efforts are diverted towards remediation. The breach itself could result in loss of intellectual property, loss of vital data, and potential service level agreement penalties. The company’s reputation gets damaged, which could result in reduced employee morale, reduced customer loyalty, and damaged relationships with investors, vendors, and suppliers. 1 in 4 Americans do not do business with companies who have experienced a data breach.

Small businesses are affected by data breaches at higher rates. 21% of small businesses have experienced a data breach in the past 24 months, and 41% of companies paid over $50,000 to recover from a breach. Your risk of experiencing a breach is higher than you may think. By 2021, a business will be a victim of a ransomware attack every 11 seconds.  57% of data breaches occur in the United States, third-party vendors cause 44 % of breaches, and there is a 29.6% chance of a business experiencing a data breach in the next two years. 

Many factors can cause data breaches , but the leading causes include:

denial of service which is when a legitimate user is denied access to information by a malicious cyber threat actor
human error
ransomware which costs an average of $646,000 to resolve
malware which costs an average of $2.6 million to resolve, and
phishing, which accounted for 60% of all fraud attacks in Q4 of 2019 and results in a $17,700 loss every minute.

Data breaches, unfortunately, do happen to businesses and can be a downfall for many. It can not only affect a business financially but can also result in many intangible costs. As hackers are getting smarter, it is critical to protect your business from falling victim to a breach. When it comes to your business,  Don’t Risk IT, Secure IT®

Click on the image or on this link to see the full infographic showing the statistics and costs of a cybersecurity data breach.

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