Ponemon Study Finds Average Cost of Data Breach Was $3.4 million in 2009
The Ponemon Institute published for the first time their Global Cost of a Data Breach study in cooperation with PGP Corporation. The study examines actual costs incurred by companies as a result of discovering and responding to a data breach. Ponemon surveyed companies in the U.S., UK, Germany, Australia and France and found that in 2009, the average cost of a data breach was $3.4 million. That is $142 per customer affected by the breach. Costs in the U.S. have risen steadily from a 2005 average incident cost of $4.5 million to a 2009 cost of $6.65 million.
