Cost of a Data Breach: Climbing Toward $4 Million

The Ponemon Institute just released its annual Cost of a Data Breach Report which it creates for IBM.

The numbers reveal that data breaches are becoming more expensive. This doesn’t come as a surprise, however, it’s an important benchmark to track. And it’s an important benchmark worth sharing with executive leadership.

2019 Cost of a Data Breach report highlights

If we had to share a few bullet points from the report, it would be these:

• Average global cost of a data breach: $3.92 million 
• Most expensive country for a data breach: United States
• Average cost of a U.S. data breach: $8.19 million
• Industry vertical with the most expensive data breach: healthcare
• Average cost of a healthcare data breach: $6.45 million
• Average data breach size: about 25,000 records 

Most cybersecurity leaders anticipate a data breach

Dr. Larry Ponemon, founder of the Ponemon Institute, says his research in the last few years shows a growing trend: CISOs and security leaders believe there’s a significant chance of a data breach happening to them.

See Most Security Leaders Expect a Data Breach for more on this.

Major risk factors for a data breach…

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