Data breach costs decline, malicious attacks increase in US

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://healthitsecurity.com/2013/06/14/data-breach-costs-decline-malicious-attacks-increase-in-us/

By Kyle Murphy, PhD
Health IT Security
June 14, 2013

The cost of data breaches is on the decline, but a new source of breaches is on 
the rise, according to a recent survey by the Ponemon Institute. In the 2012 
Cost of Data Breach Study, the organizational cost of dealing with data 
breaches has gone down from $5.5 to $5.4 million with the cost per record 
dropping from $194 to $188. In the United States, the healthcare industry only 
trails behind transportation in terms of per capita cost for data breaches. The 
cost per head is $305, which places it behind transportation ($316) but ahead 
of 11 other industries (e.g., communications, pharmaceutical, industrial).

Considering how frequently subject matter experts compare data security and 
privacy approach of the healthcare and financial industry — often suggesting 
that the former take a cue from the latter — the fact that financial costs $50 
less per capita ($254) than healthcare lends weight to that argument.

So why certain industries tend to have higher-than-average costs? It has to do 
with oversight. “Specifically, heavily regulated industries such as healthcare, 
communications, pharmaceuticals and financial services tend to have a per 
capita data breach cost substantially above the overall mean of $188,” states 
the report.

What should prove unsettling is what has emerged as the leading cause of these 
data breaches: malicious or criminal attacked. This is the first study by the 
Ponemon Institute to indicate these types of attacks as the most frequently 
encountered by organizations. In terms of distribution, human error (33%) and 
system glitches (26%) trailed the leader malicious or criminal attacks (41%).

[...]

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