Now in its 17th year, the IBM Security Report provides an insight into the cost of data breach security incidents, with healthcare leading the way for 11 consecutive years for the highest industry cost of a breach. Unsurprisingly this is likely caused by the nature and scope of the personal data the healthcare industry holds, and it is central importance to society as a whole.
A further interesting insight comes in the cost multiplier. In a small sample of mega breaches of 1 million to 65 million records, these breaches were many times more expensive than the average cost of smaller breaches. Breaches of 50 million to 65 million records were nearly 100x more expensive than breaches of 1,000-100,000 records. The issue of costs is a particular issue we see across the board and also one we are continually seeking to solve by incorporating legal tech, with legal insight, so as to reduce costs and efficiencies across the breach response process.
Organizations with a high level of system complexity had an average cost of a breach $2.15 million higher than those who had low levels of complexity. The presence of a high level of compliance failures was associated with breach costs that were $2.30 million higher than breach costs at organizations without this factor present.