Understaffing in cybersecurity — the “skills gap” — is driving up the cost of data breaches in recent years, according to a decade of reports by IBM.
The 2024 IBM Data Breach Report found that more than half of breached organizations experienced severe security staffing shortages, a 26.2% increase from the previous year. They found this through a statistical analysis of the data gathered from in-depth interviews of more than 600 organizations that suffered data breaches in the prior year.
The 2024 report makes the link between staffing shortages and cybersecurity clear:
“As we’ve seen across the industry, cybersecurity teams are consistently understaffed. This year’s study found more than half of breached organizations faced severe security staffing shortages, a skills gap that increased by double digits from the previous year. This need for trained security staff is growing as the threat landscape widens. The continuing race to adopt gen AI across nearly every function in the organization is expected to bring with it unprecedented risks and put even more pressure on these cybersecurity teams.”
The Cost of a Data Breach Report 2022 found a direct link between staffing shortages and higher data breach costs. Organizations with insufficiently staffed security teams faced an average breach cost of $4.56 million ($550,000 higher than those with sufficient staffing).
Similarly, the 2024 report revealed that the growing skills gap contributed to a $1.76 million increase in average breach costs.
Read the Cost of a Data Breach Report
