Survey after survey shows cyber as one of if not the top source of risk for organizations world-wide.
But is it?
I have previously shared reports from IBM on the cost of a data breach. In their 2024 report with the Ponemon Institute (their latest), they tell us that the average cost of a breach last year was $4.88 million. This reflects the “experiences of 604 organizations and 3,556 cybersecurity and business leaders hit by a breach”.
That doesn’t sound like a top risk to me!
I have been talking to the people at X-Analytics, a vendor of cyber risk management software. Over the last three years, their software (which is used, they say, by over a thousand organizations) has captured actual information from over 150,000 security incidents across 40,000 organizations.
They have given me permission to share the results below.
What it says is that over the last twelve months, the average cyber exposure as a percentage of revenue has been just 1.32%. (1.24% is the average for the month of March.)
It also says that the average by month as a percentage of revenue has been dropping since December 2023.
I asked them for some historical figures. These are the averages for the 12 months through the end of March:
- 2025 = 1.32%
- 2024 = 1.72%
- 2023 = 2.10%
- 2022 = 2.84%
X-Analytics explained:
Cyber exposure has been…
