The Cost of a Data Breach Report offers IT, risk management and security leaders a lens into factors that can increase or help mitigate the rising cost of data breaches.
Now in its 17th year, this research — conducted independently by Ponemon Institute, and sponsored, analyzed and published
by IBM Security® — studied 550 organizations impacted by data breaches that occurred between March 2021 and March 2022. The breaches occurred across 17 countries and regions and in 17 different industries.
They conducted more than 3,600 interviews with individuals from organizations that were impacted by the data breaches. During the interviews, we asked questions to determine the cost to organizations across different activities related directly to both the immediate and prolonged response to the data breaches.
What’s new in the 2022 report
Significantly, for the first time, the research shows the following insights:
83%
of organizations studied have had more than one data breach.
60%
of organizations’ breaches led to increases in prices passed on to customers.
79%
of critical infrastructure organizations didn’t deploy a zero trust architecture.
19%
of breaches occurred because of a compromise at a business partner
45%
of the breaches were cloud-based.
Average total cost of a data breach
Reaching an all-time high, the cost of a data breach averaged USD 4.35 million in 2022. This figure represents a 2.6% increase from last year, when the average cost of a breach was USD 4.24 million. The average cost has climbed 12.7% from USD 3.86 million in the 2020 report.
Average cost of a breach in the United States, USD 9.44 million the highest of any country.
The top five countries and regions for the highest average cost of a data breach were the United States at USD 9.44 million, the Middle East at USD 7.46 million, Canada at USD 5.64 million, the United Kingdom at USD 5.05 million and Germany at USD 4.85 million.
The United States has led the list for 12 years in a row. Meanwhile, the country with the fastest growth rate over last year was Brazil, a 27.8% increase from USD 1.08 million to USD 1.38 million.
