Average cost of data breach is $6.65 million

By Davey Winder
Tuesday, 03 February 2009 15:07

Market

The cost of an enterprise data breach has gone up a little since the Ponemon Institute first studied this ever increasingly relevant subject. By just how much might come as something of a surprise.

The very words 'data breach' are enough to send a cold shiver up any enterprise management spine, and there have been a lot of shivers of late. Indeed, one report says that 280 million people have been victims of data loss.

Remember shivering as those US Army files were found on an MP3 player? Or how the US Government shivered as a Federal employment site was breached?

Best Western Hotels certainly shivered as stories emerged of what one newspaper called the world's biggest cyber heist. The UK Government has a continuous case of the willies over data insecurity issues.

Now the fourth annual study by the PGP Corporation and the Ponemon Institute has revealed the stone cold cost of a data breach.

The study looked at some 43 organisations across 17 different industry sectors in the United States.

It tracked a wide range of costs, including the outlay for detection, escalation notification and response as well as the more commonly considered legal, investigative and administrative expense.

Oh, and not forgetting such not so small things as damage to brand, reputation management, customers defections and credit monitoring subscriptions.

By including these ex-post response expenses alongside the detection and escalation costs, and analysing the economic impact measured by customer churn, the true cost to the enterprise can be determined.

So what were those costs, exactly? And what else did the study reveal about data breaches in the enterprise? The story continues, along with details of how to get a free copy of the report, on page 2...

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