More than 8.5 billion records were compromised in data breaches in the span of one year ending April 2020, and the average cost of a mega-sized data breach was $3.86 million, a new report by IBM has found.

IBM’s annual Cost of a Data Breach report is conducted by the Ponemon Institute. The report is based on the analysis of 17 multinational companies that experienced a data breach involving the loss or theft of one million or more records.

The global average cost of a data breach that affects over a million records is $3.86 million, the report revealed.

In terms of individual countries and regions, the US has the highest average cost for data breaches, at $8.64 million.

The Middle East came in second, with an average cost of $6.52 million. Canada is the third highest, with $4.5 million.