According to data provided by Atlas VPN, the average financial losses caused by a data breach increased by nearly 10% year over year to $4.24 million in 2021. Since 2015, this is the most substantial increase.
To mention a few effects, a data breach might result in lost sales, a tarnished brand, data recovery costs, and possibly employee layoffs.
โThe record-high average losses can be directly tied to the rapid commencement of remote work, as it spawned many new weaknesses for hackers to exploit,โ says Edward Garb, a cybersecurity expert at Atlas VPN.
Between May 2020 and March 2021, IBM conducted over 3,500 distinct interviews with individuals from 17 countries and 537 organizations who had experienced a data leak.
To recap, seven years ago, the average cost of a data breach was $3.79 million. The lowest losses were experienced in 2017, with an average of $3.62 million in damages per occurrence.
In addition, the average cost of a data breach in the United States is $9.03 million, which is the highest in the world. The Middle East is in second place, with average damages of $6.93 million per occurrence.
Industry Costs of Data Breach
Surprisingly, financial losses vary greatly depending on the type of organization that has had a data breach.
With losses average of $9.23 million this year, the healthcare business has the most costly occurrences. Healthcare institutions save a lot of personal information about their patients, which could explain why breaches cost so much.
Furthermore, the healthcare industry saw one of the largest year-over-year monetary losses. Damages jumped from $7.13 million in 2020 to $9.23 million in 2021, a 29.5 percent rise, which is a high jump.
The top five worst-affected industries are financial services are:
INDUSTRIES | AMOUNT |
Healthcare | $9.23 million |
Financial services | $5.72 million |
Pharmaceuticals | $5.04 million |
Technology | $4.88 million |
Energy | $4.65 million |
With a cost of $6.39 million, the energy industry dropped from second most costly in 2020 to fifth most expensive in 2021.
โThe aggregate figures merely confirm a trend weโve seen over the last year: cybercrime damages are rising faster than theyโve ever been,โ Garb concludes.