Here are some compelling reasons to revisit your firm’s security measures: The number of criminal attacks on employer data is on the rise — and so is the cost per attack.
Last year, 31% percent of data breaches at companies involved malicious or criminal attacks on employers’ data, according to the 2010 U.S. Cost of a Data Breach study from the Ponemon Institute. That’s up from the 24% that were reported in the 2009 study.
But perhaps the most significant finding of the study is this: For the time ever, malicious or criminal attacks on company data (as opposed to internal data breaches) were the most expensive cause of data breaches.
Just how expensive? For this type of breach, the cost per compromised record average $318 — more than double the $103 average that companies reported back in ’09.