The costs by region

In the 2017 global study, the overall cost of a data breach decreased to $3.62 million, which is down 10% from $4 million last year. While global costs decreased, many regions experienced an increase.

In the U.S., the cost of a data breach was $7.35 million, a 5% increase compared to last year. When compared to other regions, U.S. organizations experienced the most expensive data breaches in the 2017 report. In the Middle East, organizations saw the second highest average cost of a data breach at $4.94 million — an uptick of 10% compared with the previous year. Canada ranked third with data breaches costing organizations $4.31 million on average.

European nations experienced the most significant decrease in costs. Germany, France, Italy and the U.K. experienced significant decreases compared to the four-year average costs. Australia, Canada and Brazil also experienced decreased costs compared to the four-year average cost of a data breach.

Time is money when you're containing a data breach

For the third year in a row, the study found that having an Incident Response (IR) Team in place significantly reduced the cost of a data breach. IR teams, along with a formal incident response plan, can assist organizations to navigate the complicated aspects of containing a data breach to mitigate further losses.

According to the study, the cost of a data breach was nearly $1 million lower on average for organizations that were able to contain a data breach in less than 30 days compared to those that took longer than 30 days. The speed of response will be increasingly critical as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is implemented in May 2018, which will require organizations doing business in Europe to report data breaches within 72 hours or risk facing fines of up to 4% of their global annual turnover.

There's still room for improvement for organizations when it comes to the time to identify and respond to a breach. On average, organizations took more than six months to identify a breach, and more than 66 additional days to contain a breach once discovered.

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Additional key findings

— For the seventh year in a row, healthcare topped the list as the most expensive industry for data breaches. Healthcare data breaches cost organizations $380 per record, more than 2.5 times the global average overall cost at $141 per record.

— Close to half of all data breaches (47%) were caused by malicious or criminal attacks, resulting in an average of $156 per record to resolve.

— Data breaches resulting from third party involvement were the top contributing factor that led to an increase in the cost of a data breach, increasing the cost $17 per record. The takeaway: Organizations need to evaluate the security posture of their third-party providers — including payroll, cloud providers and CRM software — to ensure the security of employee and customer data.

— Incident response, encryption and education were the factors shown to have the most impact on reducing the cost of a data breach. Having an incident response team in place resulted in $19 reduction in cost per lost or stolen record, followed by extensive use of encryption ($16 reduction per record) and employee training ($12.5 reduction per record).

From: PropertyCasualty360