Average cost of data breach in PH, ASEAN soars to $3.05 million

As the average cost of data breaches in the ASEAN, including the Philippines, reaches $3.05 million, it marks a new all-time high for the developing region, per IBM Security.

Via the latest edition of the “Cost of a Data Breach Report,” the report showed a 6 percent year-on-year increase as well as a 15 percent rise in the cost of detection and escalation, suggesting a pivot towards more sophisticated investigations on breaches.

Drawing from the same report, it is established that businesses across the globe are not uniform when it comes to the approach to the increasing cost and frequency of said illegal activity.

• Is your password exposed in a data breach? Here’s what you should do
• A hacked and data-breached company is no laughing matter

In a staggering finding, it is said that 95 percent of organizations that were part of the study have experienced getting breached on more than a single occasion. But instead of investing in security (which 51 percent do), they would rather pass the cost of the incidents to consumers (57 percent).

The result was derived from the in-depth analysis of real-world data breaches that affected 553 organizations between the years 2022 and 2023.

With sponsorship and analysis by IBM, the research, whose prolific record has been going on for 18 years straight, was done by Ponemon Institute and comes with the additional findings:

• Advancement in artificial intelligence is largely influential in the speed by which breaches are detected and contained and the eventual cost, based on the studied organizations—99 days shorter and a reduced cost of nearly $1.25 million.
• Involving law enforcement in cases of ransomware could save the organization $470,000 on average, revealing a piece of information that is otherwise elusive born from most organizations’ apprehension of involving law enforcement for fear of complication.
• Globally, only a third of the breaches were detected by the studied organizations while 27 percent come from disclosure from the attacker, which costs the victim $1 million on average.