Study: Average data breach costs near $13 million

Ann Arbor, Mich. – Gas prices may be falling, but the price of recovering from a data breach is steadily climbing. According to a new study from authentication technology provider Duo Security, the average cost of data breach recovery reached $12.7 million in 2014, compared to $11.6 million in 2013 and $9 million in 2012.



During 2014, the costs of recovering from individual breaches ranged from a low of $1.6 million to a high of $61 million. Data breaches at consumer products companies averaged a relatively low $6.8 million per breach, compared to the leading $26.5 million average cost for energy and utilities breaches.



Direct labor accounts for 26% of breach recovery costs, with other important contributing factors including cash outlay (22%), overhead (21%), productivity loss (21%), overhead (15%) and indirect labor (14%). On average, it takes 45 days to resolve a breach at a cost of $35,414 per day.



All companies studied have observed attacks from viruses, worms and Trojans. Other common cyberattack types include malware (94%), botnets (76%) and Web-based attacks (64%).