Healthcare saw the most expensive data breaches across all industries, with average breach costs reaching $9.77 million, a July 30 report from IBM found.
IBM's "2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report," was conducted by the Ponemon Institute. The report analyzes data from 604 organizations globally, covering breaches from March 2023 to February 2024.
Seven things to know about data breach costs:
- According to the report, organizations in the healthcare, financial services, industrial, technology and energy sectors faced the highest breach costs across all industries.
- Sixty-three percent of organizations are looking to increase their cybersecurity budgets.
- Employee training was another top priority area for investment for organizations, according to the report.
- Many organizations reported high-level staffing shortages in 2023, which according to the report, drove up breach costs to an average of $1.76 million.
- Breach costs have increased by 10% from 2023.
- Seventy percent of breached organizations reported that breaches caused significant or very significant disruption.
- Two-thirds of the organizations studied have implemented security AI and automation in their security operation centers. Those that extensively utilized these technologies in their prevention workflows saw an average reduction of $2.2 million in breach costs.