Source: Security Intelligence: Larry Ponemon & Wendi Whitmore
We’ve all heard that when it comes to experiencing a data breach, the question is not if it will happen, but when. You may be wondering about the actual odds of it happening to your organization.
Think about it this way: The chances of being struck by lightning this year are 1 in 960,000. When it comes to experiencing a data breach, according to the Ponemon Institute’s “2017 Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Overview,” the odds are as high as 1 in 4. Therefore, organizations must understand the probability of being attacked, how it affects them and, even more importantly, which factors can reduce or increase the impact and cost of a data breach.
Sponsored by IBM Security and independently conducted by the Ponemon Institute, the 12th annual “Cost of Data Breach Study” is out. The findings revealed that the average total cost of a data breach is $3.62 million in 2017, a decrease of 10 percent over last year. Additionally, the global average cost per record for this year’s report is $141, which represents a decrease of 11.4 percent over last year.
Despite the reduction in cost, the average size of a data breach increased by 1.8 percent to 24,089 records. The influencers that impact the cost of a data breach are driven by the country and the IT initiatives underway.
The good news is that organizations can take measures to minimize cost and impact. The 2017 “Cost of Data Breach Study” found that having access to an internal or outsourced incident response team has been the top cost-reducing factor for three years running. An incident response team typically accelerates the time frame in which security events can be contained, which is a significant factor in reducing the overall cost of a breach.
The IBM X-Force Incident Response and Intelligence Services (IRIS) team specializes in providing incident response planning, program development, remediation and threat intelligence to clients in over 133 countries. The team has experience responding to and helping to contain many of the largest data breaches in the world.
Listed below are five additional tips to help accelerate your organization’s response to a breach.