IBM Report: Escalating Data Breach Costs in Canada

From IBM's recently released annual Cost of a Data Breach Report,

• Canadian organizations pay an average cost of CAD$6.32 million per data breach.
• Financial sector pays CAD$9.28 million on average per breach, the technology sector is paying CAD$7.84 million on average, and the industrial sector pays CAD$7.81 million on average.
• Organizations with extensive use of security AI and automation report costs of CAD$2.84 million less and 54-day shorter breach lifecycles.

The report highlights the importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in cybersecurity. The findings show that 61% of Canadian companies are now deploying security AI and automation to prevent and combat breaches, which has led to a reduction in breach costs.

According to the report, threat intelligence, employee training and identity and access management (IAM) were identified as key factors in helping to reduce data breach costs.

The report also drew attention to the importance of proper storage and management of data. 33% of breaches involved data stored across multiple environments and 31% involved data stored solely on the public cloud. Breaches solely involving the public cloud were also the most expensive to remediate, at CAD$6.74 million on average.