Here’s How a Data Breaches is Ultimately Costing Consumers Millions of Dollars

With time the use of technology has increased by ten folds, well rightly so, since it makes our lives a lot easier and faster. Despite all its advantages, we end up paying for it in different ways, one of which is data breaching or simply the stealing of our data

According to reports from IBM, we are currently experiencing the highest number of data breaches and these numbers are only bound to increase. As per the reports an average data breach can costs somewhere around 4.4 million dollars. But is it mega corporations and businesses that are paying this price?

Well, certainly not, the costs incurred from data breaches ultimately affect consumers by an increase in prices.

Comparing data breaching figures from that of last year, you would find that they have nearly doubled since data breachers keep on finding newer ways to break in the strongest of security systems.

Once a data breach affects a mainstream company, a lot of sensitive user data gets released thus making the end users pay in not one but two different ways.

IBM for this report, surveyed over 550 big and small organizations that in one way or the other have been a victim of data breaching. From the data obtained, it could easily be seen that most of the companies that are affected belong to crucial industries such as finance, technology, energy, healthcare, education, public sector and communication. Health care proved to be the most affected, suffering from around 10.1 million dollars per breach.

Out of all the organizations contacted, at least half of them admitted to having directed these costs towards their customers by increasing the prices of their products and services.

The costs incurred by each data breach, is both direct and indirect, and can be broken down into different parts. Some of these are ransom payments for data, investigation and prevention costs, loss of sales, and most importantly the loss of consumer trust. These costs are incurred in both long and short term, the report mentions that half of these costs are incurred by business after a year of the breach.