Data breach costs continue to grow, according to new research, reaching a record-high global average of $4.45 million, representing a 15% increase over three years. Costs in the healthcare industry continued to top the charts, as the most expensive industry for the 13th year in a row. Yet as breach costs continue to climb, the research points to new opportunities for containing breach costs.
The research, conducted independently by Ponemon Institute and analyzed and published by IBM Security, constitutes the 18th annual Cost of a Data Breach Report. A leading benchmark study in the security industry, the report is designed to help IT, risk management and security leaders identify gaps in their security posture and discover what measures are most successful at minimizing the financial and reputation damages of a costly data breach.
The 2023 edition of the report draws analysis from a collection of real-world data breaches at 553 organizations, with thousands of individuals interviewed and hundreds of cost factors analyzed to create the conclusions in the report. (The breaches studied occurred between March 2022 and March 2023, so mentions of years in this post refer to the year of the study not necessarily the year of the breach.)
Explore the report
Top findings from the Cost of a Data Breach report
Below are some of the top findings from the 2023 Cost of a Data Breach Report.
1. Security AI and automation, a DevSecOps approach, and breach report
