Missed this when it came out a couple of weeks ago, but the IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report is always enlightening, so here are some key stats from it.

Announced here back on July 24, the 2023 IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report is based on in-depth analysis of real-world data breaches experienced by 553 organizations globally between March 2022 and March 2023. The research, sponsored and analyzed by IBM Security, was conducted by Ponemon Institute and has been published for 18 consecutive years. Some key findings in the 2023 IBM report include:

• The global average cost of a data breach reached $4.45 million in 2023 – an all-time high for the report and a 15% increase over the last 3 years.
• In 2023, it took a mean time of 277 days to identify and contain a data breach – the same number of days as 2022. That means a data breach that occurred on January 1st this year won’t be identified and contained until October 4th – on average! The mean time to identify (MTTI) breaches dropped from 207 days to 204, but the mean time to contain (MTTC) rose to 73 days from 70.
• AI and automation had the biggest impact on speed of breach identification and containment for studied organizations. Organizations with extensive use of both AI and automation experienced a data breach lifecycle that was 108 days shorter compared to studied organizations that have not deployed these technologies (214 days versus 322 days).
• Ransomware victims in the study that involved law enforcement saved $470,000 in average costs of a breach (and 33 days cut from the average breach life cycle) compared to those that chose not to involve law enforcement.
• The average costs of a studied breach in healthcare reached $10.93 million in 2023 – a 53% price increase since 2020. That’s nearly twice the average cost of a breach for the next highest industry, which is Financial at $5.90 million.
• For the 13th consecutive year, the United States held the title for the highest average data breach cost at $9.48 million.

The FREE 2023 IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report is 78(!) pages, but they are chock-full of stats and graphics that makes it a must download every year, which you can do here.

So, what do you think? Were you aware that the 2023 IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report was out yet? You are now! Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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