The cost of data breaches as well as the frequency of them has increased over the past five years, according to IBM Security's Cost of Insider Threats: 2020 Global report.
For the report, IBM interviewed 964 IT and IT security professionals at 204 organizations in North America, Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia-Pacific. IBM conducted the interviews in September 2019.
Here are five things to know:
1. In 2019, the average cost of a data breach when an imposter or thief steals information was $871,686. This is up from 2018 when the average expense was $493,093.
2. When an insider, such as employee or contractor, steals information, it can cost organizations $307,111. The average cost of a data breach from a criminal or malicious insider was $756,760.
3. Of the 4,176 security incidents that were reported in 2019, nearly 3,000 were due to negligent or inadvertent employees. Just over 1,100 incidents were the cause of criminal or malicious insiders while 649 incidents involved stolen credentials.
4. Along with increasing costs to recover from a data breach, the frequency of data breaches jumped from companies reporting one a year in 2016 to an average 3.2 each in 2019.
5. Over the past year, IBM estimates that large organizations with more than 75,000 employees spent $17.92 million to resolve insider data breaches. Additionally, 60 percent of the organizations had more than 20 incidents in 2019.
To access the complete report, click here.