Negligence is mostly to blame for breaches of data at organisations, costing them an average of US$7.2m, a new study suggests.
The average cost per record came to US$214, an increase of US$10 from the previous year, the 2010 Annual Study: U.S. Cost of a Data Breach reveals.
The most common threat is negligence, at 41pc of all breaches, the study shows.
The costs associated with a breach involve several elements:
- detecting the incident
- investigation
- forensics
- customer notification
- paying for identity-protection services for victims
- business disruption
- productivity losses
Thirty-one per cent of all breaches fall under the fastest-growing category, malice or crime. Malicious or criminal attacks also cost organisations dearly. The most expensive breach reported in the study was US$35.3m, and the least expensive came in at US$780,000.
The Ponemon Institute conducted the study, sponsored by Symantec, and is based on data supplied by 51 US companies across 15 industry sectors.
