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IBM Report Reveals Data Breach Costs Surge to $4.88M in 2024

July 31, 2024
3 min read
Author: Joyce Onyeagoro

IBM has released its annual Cost of a Data Breach Report revealing the global average cost of a data breach reached $4.88 million in 2024, as breaches grow more disruptive and further expand demands on cyber teams. Breach costs increased 10% from the prior year, the largest yearly jump since the pandemic, as 70% of breached organizations reported that the breach caused significant or very significant disruption.

Lost business and post-breach customer and third-party response costs drove the year-over-year cost spike, as the collateral damage from data breaches has only intensified. The disruptive effects data breaches are having on businesses are not only driving up costs, but are also extending the after-effect of a breach, with recovery taking more than 100 days for most of the small number (12%) of breached organizations that were able to fully recover.

The 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report is based on an in-depth analysis of real-world data breaches experienced by 604 organizations globally between March 2023 and February 2024. The research, conducted by Ponemon Institute, and sponsored and analyzed by IBM, has been published for 19 consecutive years and has studied the breaches of more than 6,000 organizations, becoming an industry benchmark.  

Some key findings in the 2024 IBM report include:

  • Understaffed Security Teams – More organizations faced severe staffing shortages compared to the prior year (26% increase) and observed an average of $1.76 million in higher breach costs than those with low level or no security staffing issues.
  • AI-Powered Prevention Pays Off – Two out of three organizations studied are deploying security AI and automation across their security operation center (SOC). When these technologies were used extensively across prevention workflows organizations incurred an average $2.2 million less in breach costs, compared to those with no use in these workflows – the largest cost savings revealed in the 2024 report.
  • Data Visibility Gaps – Forty percent of breaches involved data stored across multiple environments including public cloud, private cloud, and on-prem. These breaches cost more than $5 million on average and took the longest to identify and contain (283 days).

Businesses are caught in a continuous cycle of breaches, containment and fallout response. This cycle now often includes investments in strengthening security defenses and passing breach expenses on to consumers – making security the new cost of doing business. As generative AI rapidly permeates businesses, expanding the attack surface, these expenses will soon become unsustainable, compelling business to reassess security measures and response strategies. To get ahead, businesses should invest in new AI-driven defenses and develop the skills needed to address the emerging risks and opportunities presented by generative AI.

Kevin Skapinetz, Vice President, Strategy and Product Design, IBM Security
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