IBM & Ponemon Institute Survey Indicate Costs On Data Breach Rising

International Business Machines Corp's IBM Security division revealed the results of an international study analyzing the financial impact of data breaches to the bottom line of a firm. The study, which was sponsored by IBM and conducted by the Ponemon Institute, found that the average cost of a data breach for companies surveyed has grown to $4 million. This represented 29 percent growth over the year 2013.

The survey also found Cybersecurity incidents continued to witness growth in both volume and sophistication, with 64 percent more security incidents reported in 2015 than the preceding year. IBM-sponsored survey also indicated that as these threats become more complex, the cost to companies continues to rise.

According to the study2, the companies lose $158 per compromised record. Also, breaches in highly regulated industries were even more costly. For instance, healthcare breaches reached $355 per record – a full $100 more than in 2013.

IBM-sponsored survey also found that leveraging an incident response team was the single largest factor related with reducing the cost of a data breach – saving firms nearly $400,000 on average (or $16 per record).

IBM's VP, Resilient, Ted Julian, commented, "The amount of time, effort and costs that companies face in the wake of a data breach can be devastating, and unfortunately most companies still don't have a plan in place to deal with this process efficiently. While the risk is inevitable, having a coordinated and automated incident response plan, as well as access to the right resources and skills, can make or break how much a company is impacted by a security event."

In the current year, the tech firm boosted its investment in the Incident Response market with the acquisition of Resilient Systems. Resilient's Incident Response Platform (IRP) enables security teams to analyze, respond, and mitigate incidents quicker and more efficiently. The newest version of the platform included Resilient Incident Visualization, which graphically displays the relationships between Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) and incidents in an organization's environment.