Some Insights From IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report

Joe Lazzarotti at The Workplace Privacy, Data Management & Security Report calls our attention to some interesting findings in IBM’s annual Cost of a Data Breach Report. Some of these will not surprise you, but some may:

  • Organizations that did not involve law enforcement in a ransomware attack experienced significantly higher costs, as much as $470,000. Nearly 40% of respondents did not involve law enforcement. Law enforcement often has valuable information on threat actors that may help you contain a breach faster or recover from it faster. And as we saw last year, the FBI was inside Hive’s infrastructure for months and was able to save a number of victims from having to pay for a decryptor.
  • Having ransomware playbooks and workflows helps to reduce response time and minimize costs.
  • AI has many benefits, including controlling data breach costs. “….extensive use of security AI and automation resulted in reducing breach detection and containment by 108 days on average, and nearly $2 million in cost reduction. Even limited use of AI shortened the response time by 88 days, on average.”
  • Smaller organizations faced significant data breach cost increases, while larger organizations experienced declines.

Read more details on Workplace Privacy, Data Management & Security Report.