The analysis showed that globally, a data breach cost companies $3.86 million per incident during the nine-month period of the study. The average breach cost in the US as usual was more than twice that, at $8.64 million on average. Healthcare organizations globally once again shelled out more on average for a data breach — $7.13 million — than organizations in any other sector.

Even though breach-related costs increased for many organizations, the global average of $3.86 million itself was marginally lower than the $3.92 million reported last year. That was because there were more organizations in the 2020 study with mature security practices, and therefore substantially lower breach costs, compared to 2019.

The IBM/Ponemon study showed that total data breach costs for organizations that reported having a complex security system environment was nearly $292,000 higher on average than companies that did not have the same issue. Other factors that substantially amplified the average cost of a breach included cloud migration ($267,469), security skills shortages ($257,429), and compliance failures ($255,626).

At the same time the study highlighted several other factors that can help mitigate breach costs for organizations. For instance, organizations that regularly tested their incident response plans ended up spending some $295,000 less than the global average on breach-related costs while those with a business continuity plan spent about $279,000 less. Other cost mitigating factors included red-team testing ($243,185), AI-enabled response ($259,354), and employee training ($238,019).

Charles DeBeck, strategic cyber threat analyst at IBM’s X-Force IRIS incident response team, says one notable data point from the report is the difference in breach costs between those organizations that have automated their threat response capabilities, and those that have not.

Full Article: https://www.darkreading.com/attacks-breaches/average-cost-of-a-data-breach-$386-million/d/d-id/1338489