Data breaches are becoming more costly as they get more frequent and more severe. In 2024, the average cost of a data breach rose to $4.88 million, a 10% rise over the previous year.
In the year 2024, what do most data breaches occur for? I was wondering how long it takes to report and remediate a breach. Just what can a small or medium-sized business do when even the Pentagon has trouble keeping data contained?
- A data breach in 2024 would cost an average of $4.88 million, up 10% from the previous year.
- By 2024, 55% of data breaches will have been caused by malicious or criminal activities.
- Customer PII accounted for nearly half of all data breaches in 2024, with IP records coming in a close second.
- In spite of GDPR, firms are still at risk of data breaches due to loopholes in privacy legislation, particularly in the United States.
- Existing regulations are ill-equipped to deal with the cybersecurity threats posed by emerging technology, such as artificial intelligence and the proliferation of shadow data.
The Cost of a Data Breach in 2024
The average cost of a data breach is $4.88 million, according to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024. This is a substantial amount, especially for a large organization.
These breaches continue, putting our personal information at risk, despite data protection laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union (EU). This makes us wonder if the privacy laws we have in place are adequate to prevent data leaks.
The myriad of methods cybercriminals employ to get access to systems and steal sensitive information is only growing in sophistication.
After that, they can demand payment in exchange for not selling or leaking the data. A large number of data breaches in 2024 were caused by criminal or hostile attacks (55% of all breaches), followed by IT failure (23% of breaches), and human error (22% of breaches).
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Additionally, 46% of breaches included PII, which might expose things like customers' home addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, and tax IDs.
Nearly half of all breaches involved intellectual property (IP) records.
Data breaches have thus grown so frequent that many may have lost interest in them, despite the fact that we ought to be giving them more serious consideration.
Nonetheless, there are still major repercussions to these breaches. As an example, 2.7 billion individuals' personal information was allegedly stolen in a recent hack involving National Public Data (NPD), a data broker in the US.
"In 2024, over half of organizations reported their data breach in under 72 hours, while 34% took more than 72 hours to report. Just 11% were not required to report the breach at all."
In 2024, there were more notable breaches:
- AT&T: The call and text records of nearly all AT&T customers were exposed.
- OpenAI: A breach resulted in the theft of internal info about its AI tech.
- Trump Campaign: Hacked by foreign agents for internal communications.
The Role of Privacy Legislation
Data breach prevention laws, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enacted by the European Union, hold businesses liable for the security of their customers' personal information and any breaches that may occur. Companies are obligated to disclose any breaches in compliance with GDPR legislation and face hefty fines in the event that personal data is exposed.
Half or more of the companies that experienced a data breach in 2024 did so within 72 hours, while a third waited longer than that. Global disparities in breach handling are evident in the fact that just 11% were exempt from reporting the incident at all.
Organizations, especially those in the United States, are left exposed due to loopholes in the existing legislation, despite the advancements made by GDPR.
Because of the complexity of data security in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, current privacy regulations may not adequately address these concerns. For example, artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to both enhance cybersecurity and launch cyberattacks.
It is becoming more difficult to enforce privacy standards due to the proliferation of shadow data, which is unmanaged data that frequently goes unnoticed by IT teams.
"With new technologies like AI and the rise of shadow data creating challenges that current laws can't keep up with or fully handle."
Conclusion
The financial and reputational harm to companies is on the rise due to the increase of data breaches, which provide threat actors with a digital treasure trove of sensitive information.
Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and the proliferation of shadow data are reshaping the digital landscape at a rate that existing regulations are ill-equipped to manage.
More stringent privacy laws are required to adequately protect individuals' private data, and companies must also work to strengthen their cybersecurity measures so that they are not just in compliance but also ready to tackle more sophisticated cyberattacks.
