If 2024 taught us anything, it’s that breaches are no longer knocking on the door—they’re breaking in.
IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report highlights how breaches are more frequent, expensive, and complex than ever.
So, what can we learn from the latest report, and how can your organization turn these insights into actionable strategies? Let’s dive into the key takeaways from the 2024 report and explore what they mean for businesses aiming to stay ahead in a world fraught with data risks.
What can we learn from the report
The 2024 IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report offers a detailed and often alarming look into the growing risks businesses face. But with the right strategy, technologies, and foresight, organizations can significantly mitigate their exposure and save millions in the process.
There were eight key insights we need to take away from this report. The first one is the rising cost of data breach. The cost of a data breach in 2024 hit a record $4.88 million, driven by lost business ($2.8 million), regulatory fines, and downtime. With cybercriminals using advanced tactics like phishing and ransomware, the financial impact is no longer an inconvenience—it can break a business. Investing in robust cybersecurity and conducting regular risk assessments are critical steps to prevent this.
The next key takeaway is that despite a slight improvement, it still takes 258 days to identify and contain a breach—over eight months of potential damage. Breaches lasting more than 200 days cost an average of $5.46 million, up 10.3% from last year. Rapid incident response and real-time monitoring are essential to reducing this timeline and minimizing damage.
While all breaches are bad, hybrid cloud breaches are the most expensive. Breaches in hybrid cloud environments cost $5.17 million on average, a 13.1% increase. The complexity of managing multiple systems and access points drives up both risk and cost. Comprehensive visibility and strict access controls are essential to reduce financial exposure in these environments.
However, not all of the insights were gloom and doom. AI and Automation provided a silver lining. AI and automation offer a bright spot: organizations using these technologies saved $2.22 million in breach costs. By automating threat detection and response, AI reduces both breach time and damage. For modern cybersecurity, AI is no longer optional—it’s essential.
Heading into 2025, there’s a lot of uncertainty. However, one thing that we can be sure of is that cyber attacks continue to rise. Extortion-based attacks—destructive breaches ($5.68 million), data exfiltration
About the Author
Verrion Wright is security and privacy researcher at BigID. BigID is a leader in data security, privacy, compliance, and governance: enabling organizations to proactively discover, manage, protect, and get more value from their data in a single platform for data visibility and control. Customers use BigID to reduce their data risk, automate security and privacy controls, achieve compliance, and understand their data across their entire data landscape: including multicloud, hybrid cloud, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and on-prem data sources.
Featured image: Adobe Stock
