Indian Organizations Experience 12 Percent Increase in Average Total Cost of Data Breach
Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) and the Ponemon Institute today released the 2013 Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Analysis which reveals human errors and system problems caused two-thirds of global data breaches and three-fourths of data breaches in India in 2012, pushing the global average to INR 7,360 per record. Issues included employee mishandling of confidential data, lack of system controls, and violations of industry and government regulations. Heavily regulated fields including healthcare, finance and pharmaceutical incurred breach costs 70 percent higher than other industries.
Following the global pattern, the cost per record for Indian organizations increased over the previous year, with Indian organizations incurring INR 2,271 per compromised record in 2012. However, organizations that appointed a chief information security officer (CISO) with enterprise-wide responsibilities, comprehensive incident response plans, and stronger overall security programs, experienced reduced costs globally and in India.
“While external attackers and their evolving methods pose a great threat to companies, the dangers associated with the insider threat can be equally destructive and insidious,” said Larry Ponemon, chairman, Ponemon Institute. “Eight years of research on data breach costs has shown employee behavior to be one of the most pressing issues facing organizations today, up 22 percent since the first survey.”
“Given organizations with strong security postures and incident response plans experienced breach costs 20 percent less than others globally, the importance of a well-coordinated, holistic approach is clear,” said Anand Naik, Managing Director-Sales, India & SAARC, Symantec. “Companies must protect their customers’ sensitive information no matter where it resides, be it on a PC, mobile device, corporate network or data center.”
The eighth annual global report is based on the actual data breach experiences of 277 companies in nine countries including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, India, Japan, Australia, and Brazil. The nine country and global summary reports can be found athttp://bit.ly/10FjDik. All of the data breach incidents studied in the reports occurred in the 2012 calendar year. In order to properly track trend data, the Ponemon Institute does not include “mega data breaches” of more than 100,000 compromised records.
Companies can analyze their own risk by visiting Symantec’s Data Breach Risk Calculator which takes the organization’s size, industry, location and security practices into consideration for both a per record and an organizational estimate.
BANGALORE, India. – June 7th, 2013 – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) and the Ponemon Institute today released the 2013 Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Analysis which reveals human errors and system problems caused two-thirds of global data breaches and three-fourths of data breaches in India in 2012, pushing the global average to INR 7,360 per record[1]. Issues included employee mishandling of confidential data, lack of system controls, and violations of industry and government regulations. Heavily regulated fields including healthcare, finance and pharmaceutical incurred breach costs 70 percent higher than other industries.
[1] The Ponemon Institute considers customer or consumer data (including payment transactional information), employee records, citizen, patient and student information as a data record. The cost per record is the average cost per compromised data record of direct and indirect expenses incurred by the organization.
