As per a study by IBM Security, the average cost of a data breach has increased to $4.24 (Rs 320 million) million in 2021, reaching its highest in seventeen years.
In India, the cost stands at Rs 165 million, the study states. Indian organisations, which are in the mature stages of adopting zero-trust deployment, spent Rs 131.8 million against each data breach. That figure stood at Rs 198.7 million for companies that are in the early stages of adopting zero-trust deployment.
The study titled ‘The Cost Of A Data Breach’ developed by Ponemon Institute and sponsored and analysed by IBM Security, is based on an analysis of real-world data breaches experienced by more than 500 organisations. According to the study, security incidents became more costly and harder to contain during the pandemic due to drastic operational changes. Such costs rose by 10 per cent as compared to the pre-pandemic era.
Key findings of the study include:
- A data breach cost over $1 million more when remote work was indicated as a factor.
- Industries that faced huge operational changes during the Covid-19 pandemic also experienced a substantial increase in data breach costs year on year.
- Data breaches in the healthcare sector cost the most at $9.23 million per incident— $2 million higher than the previous year. Stolen user credentials were the most common root cause of breaches in the study.
- Customer personal data (name, email address, password, etc.) was the most common type of information exposed in data breaches with 44 per cent of incidents including this type of data.
- The average mean time to identify a data breach increased from 230 to 239 days and the average mean time to contain a data breach decreased from 83 to 81 days.
