System Failure Blamed for Increasing Data Breach Costs
The Register reports system failure has replaced negligence as the single biggest source of data breaches involving UK firms, the cost of which rose for the third successive year. The average data breach cost UK organizations £1.9 million or £71 per record, an increase of 13%from the year before, according to a Symantec-sponsored survey. Cost of breaches ranged from £36,000 to £6.2 million. The 2010 edition of the survey blamed malicious or criminal attacks for 29 per cent of all data breaches, up from 22% during 2009. The costs arising from data breaches include cleanup costs as well as increased customer churn due to diminished trust. More than a third (37% of the cases scrutinized during the study involved system failure, up 7 percentage points from 2009.
