Data breach costs are at an all-time high. Learn which techniques and technologies can save your organization hundreds of thousands of dollars in the event of a breach.

Data breach costs have reached $4.24 million, according to IBM. Although the number of breaches themselves have decreased slightly, the impact of attacks has grown considerably. Experts attribute this to several main factors:

Remote Work

COVID-19 caught many organizations off guard, forcing companies to shift to remote infrastructure at a moment’s notice. IBM’s report findings reveal that breaches involving remote work were $1 million more expensive on average than traditional breaches.

Healthcare Breaches on the Rise

Healthcare made some of the most operational changes during the pandemic, which caused a substantial increase in data breach costs. At $9.23 million per incident, healthcare breaches cost the most of any industry.

Compromised Credentials

According to Verizon, 61 percent of breaches can be attributed to stolen credentials. Passwords and other login information used in one breach are routinely tried by hackers in subsequent breaches. Why? Because 82 percent of users reuse passwords across multiple systems, applications, and services.

How to Reduce the Cost of a Breach

In the IBM study, researchers found that organizations with a mature zero trust strategy had an average breach cost of $3.28 million— $1.76 million lower than those without. Similarly, those with a fully deployed security automation strategy experienced an average breach cost of $2.9 million, compared to a staggering $6.71 million of those without.

Incident response teams are also a proven method of reducing breach costs— up to $360,000, in fact. What’s more, organizations that routinely tested their incident response plans saved an additional $320,000.

Clearly, quick detection is a money-saver, which is why organizations are utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) for automated security. Limiting the time to detect and respond to threats will considerably decrease the cost of a data breach— and AI has the number-crunching power to do just that.

The Brass Tacks

If you only take one thing from this article, let it be: modernize and mature. Security automation, zero trust architecture, and incident response work. Those who refuse to implement new strategies and technologies will be taken by cyber criminals again and again, losing money, investors, customers, and reputation. No matter your budget, you can improve your odds against data breaches. Contact Securance to learn more.