Average data breach cost in India hits all-time high in 2024: report

New Delhi: United States-based technology firm IBM in its report suggests how costly a data breach could get when unauthorised parties access confidential information.

IBM’s annual “Cost of a Data Breach Report” said that the average cost of data breach in India reached an all-time high of Rs 19.5 crore in 2024, Scroll reported, adding that the cost of such breaches jumped 39% since 2020.

“Globally, 70% of breached organisations reported that the breach caused significant or very significant disruption,” the report said.

Sponsored and analysed by IBM, the findings of the research by the Ponemon Institute were based on analysis of data breaches faced by 604 organisations globally between March 2023 and February 2024.

The increase in the cost of breaches in India stems from lost businesses and notification costs, it is reported, adding that lost business means the loss of revenue, customers or market share from various reason including data breaches.

However, notification costs have to do with expenses incurring from using external party to notify individuals or firms about a data breach or a security incident that leads to compromising of their personal information.

“The cost of lost business – operational downtime, lost customers, and reputation damage, among others – escalated nearly 45%, and notification costs jumped 19% from the previous year,” the report said.

Phishing and stolen or compromised credentials reportedly accounted for 18% of the most common cyberattack types in India, which was followed by cloud misconfiguration at 12%, according to the report.

The report noted that costliest of all is business emails getting compromised from a data breach, followed by “social engineering” attacks at Rs 21.3 crore and phishing at Rs 20.9 crore and per breach cost an average Rs 21.5 crore.

The industrial sector is the most-affected of all by data breaches in India costing an average Rs 25.5 crore, which is followed by the technology industry at Rs 24.3 crore and the pharmaceutical sector at Rs 22.1 crore.

“Globally, critical infrastructure sectors – such as healthcare, financial services, industrial, technology, and energy organisations – incurred the highest breach costs across industries,” the report said.

It is reported earlier this year that a total of 53 lakh Indian online accounts suffered data breaches in 2023.