IBM recently released some staggering statistics about the cost of data breaches. According to international statistics, the average cost of a data breach is about $233 per record. This means that if your company has a data breach of 10,000 records which for some companies is not a lot of records, it would cost about $230,000. These costs are a combination of compliance fines like PII, PCI, PHI, or HIPAA along with the incident resolution costs, and even class action lawsuits. The reality is that it might not cost you an entire $230,000 but why take that risk. Beyond having basic security measures in place like a strong password, employee training, corporate policies for data handling and best practices with sensitive data – a breach can still happen. As a business owner, it might make sense to take advantage of cyber-liability insurance which can help ease the costs involved with security breaches.
According to an article by Gizmodo,
“In the United States, costs associated with loss of business after a data breach are actually higher than the total cost of dealing with a data breach globally, and more than double the amount of ‘lost business costs’ compared to any other region surveyed.”
Further, specific types of sensitive data might end up costing you more. If you have credit card payment information stored in your computer systems, you might want to explore cyber liability insurance while also tightening up your process and procedures for protecting that data. Below are some good links to various cost calculators so you can see just how much a data breach might end up costing your company:
- Data Breach Risk Assessment Calculator
- Breach Cost Calculator
