Average Cost of Data Breach Climbed to Record $4.45 Million Last Year, Research Finds

Eighty-two percent of breaches involved data stored in the cloud, whether in public, private or multiple environments.

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UnitedHealth Group now estimates that the cyberattack on its Change Healthcare business unit earlier this year will cost the company between $2.3 billion and $2.45 billion. The damage to its reputation and the economic fallout to its clients may be incalculable.

The company is not alone, as the cost of data breaches has reached record levels. IBM Security analyzed the rising expense associated with cyberattacks in its Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023.

“Globally, the average cost of a data breach rose to $4.45 million, a $100,000 increase from 2022,” the report said. “This represents a 2.3% increase from the 2022 average cost of $4.35 million. Since 2020, when the average total cost of a data breach was $3.86 million, the average total cost has increased 15.3%.”

Among the report’s key findings:

The report concluded with four recommendations: Build security into every stage of software development and deployment, and test regularly; modernize data protection across the hybrid cloud; use security AI and automation to increase speed and accuracy; and strengthen resiliency by knowing the attack surface and practicing incident response.