This year saw a record-high increase in the average data breach cost, reaching $4.4 million, according to research from IBM Security issued on Wednesday. That was an increase of 2.6 percent from the previous year and a 13 percent increase since 2020.
IBM created this report by examining data breaches that occurred at 550 businesses globally between March 2021 and March 2022. The institute carried out the study, which IBM financed and assessed.
According to the report, more than half of the businesses admitted to passing on these expenses to customers in the form of higher prices for their goods and services.
The cost projections take into account both short-term and long-term expenses. While some expenses, such as ransom payments and those associated with assessing and controlling the breach, are usually apparent right away, others, such as regulatory fines and lost sales, may take years to become evident. However, according to the majority of those questioned, it took them more than a year to incur just under half of the costs associated with a single breach.
In response to a class action lawsuit brought by consumers over a data breach discovered about a year ago and exposed the personal information of an estimated 76.6 million people, T-Mobile announced Friday that it would pay $500 million to resolve the case.
T-Mobile will pay $350 million to settle the customers’ claims and an additional $150 million to improve its data protection, subject to judicial approval, which might occur before the end of the year. Information on customers, including names, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, addresses, and dates of birth, were exposed in the breach, which was made public in August.
Critical infrastructure from the financial services, industrial, technology, energy, transportation, communication, healthcare, education, and public-sector industries targeted several of the most expensive breaches examined in the IBM report.
According to IBM, the average cost of these intrusions was $4.8 million, nearly $1 million higher than the average cost paid by enterprises outside of critical infrastructure.
Part of this is due to the exceptionally high costs of breaches in the health care industry. Healthcare had the highest average per-breach cost of $10.1 million, up from $9.2 million in 2021.