Cybersecurity » How Much Will A Data Breach Cost?

How Much Will A Data Breach Cost?

May 22, 2015

money doodle drawing

A post from LeClairRyan attorney Jim Potepan summarizes a recent Ponemon Institute report that analyzed actual costs of data breach remediation in a sample of 61 U.S. companies. The study quantifies what is commonly known, the writer notes: that when a company suffers a data breach that requires notification, the costs are significant. But that doesn’t make the numbers less alarming. The average cost for each lost or stolen record was $201, which translates into an average cost per incident of  $5.85 million. In addition to direct costs, like hiring forensic experts and lawyers, those figures includes a larger chunk of indirect lost-opportunity or reputational costs, including the costs of abnormal customer turnover and reduced rates of new customer acquisitions. Interestingly, the writer points out, the costs for businesses that had an incident response plan in effect before the breach occurred were found to be significantly less – about 8.5 percent less –  than the overall average.

Read full article at:

Daily Updates

Sign up for our free daily newsletter for the latest news and business legal developments.

Scroll to Top