Atlas VPN stated that according to the numbers provided by IBM, the average financial damages caused by a data breach grew around 10% year over year to $4.24 million between May 2020 and March 2021. In 2020, a data breach caused an average of $3.86 million in monetary damages. Researchers conducted roughly 3,500 separate interviews with individuals from 17 countries and 537 firms.
9.84% increase YoY
According to the results, as many as 44% of records stolen included some kind of personally identifiable information which includes email address, Social Security number, full name, driver’s license number, bank account number, and passport number.
Among the top five worst affected industries are the financial ($5.72 million), pharmaceuticals ($5.04 million), technology ($4.88 million), and energy ($4.65 million) sectors. Other industries faced large YoY increases as well, such as media (92.1% growth), hospitality (76.2% growth), retail (62.7% growth), and consumer (42.9% growth).