The Cost Of Data Breaches In A Remote-Work World

A recent study by IBM and the Ponemon Institute quantifies the rising cost of data breaches as workers moved to remote environments during the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the report, an average data breach in 2021 cost $4.24 million – up from $3.86 million in 2020. However, where remote work was a factor in causing the breach, the cost increased by $1.07 million. At organizations with 81-100 percent of employees working remotely, the total average cost was $5.54 million.

To combat the risks associated the rise of remote work, the study highlights the importance of security artificial intelligence (AI) and automation fully deployed – a process by which security technologies are enabled to supplement or substitute human intervention in the identification and containment of incidents and intrusion efforts.

Indeed, organizations with fully deployed security AI/automation saw the average cost of a data breach decrease to $2.90 million.

The duration of the breach was also substantially lower, taking an average of 184 days to identify the breach and 63 days to contain the breach, as opposed to an average of 239 days to identify the breach and 85 days to contain the breach for organizations without these technologies.