With the average cost of a data breach in 2019 as high as $3.9 million, it’s imperative for companies to understand the increasing risks, rising costs and expanding customer turnover rates associated with breaches – and to plan accordingly. Nelson Mullins’ Kelly Frey and Joseph Damon discuss.
In its new 2019 Cost of a Data Breach Study for IBM, the Ponemon Institute[1] continues to track the escalating year-over-year costs of data breaches. According to the study, the average total cost of a data breach increased from $3.86 million to $3.92 million, and the average cost for each lost record increased from $148 to $150. And while the rate of increase this year is less than prior years, the total costs of data breaches across industries continues to climb. And there’s evidence that a single breach can have continuing, year-over-year costs after the breach is discovered and remediated.
The study this year also suggests that “the loss of customer trust [related to a data breach] has serious financial consequences, and [at 36 percent of total average breach costs] lost business is the largest of the four major cost categories contributing to the total cost of a data breach.”
A data breach typically involves situations where confidential, sensitive or personally identifiable information (the elements of…
