According to IBM’s latest Cost of a Data Breach Report, the global average cost of a data breach increased to $4.88 million in 2024, a 10% jump over the previous year.
The increase was primarily driven by rising business disruption costs like system downtime, lost customers and reputation damage, and post-breach response expenses such as call center staffing, regulatory fines and credit monitoring services for customers.
By region, the United States saw the highest average data breach costs at $9.36 million, followed by the Middle East at $8.75 million. With average expenses of $9.77 million, health care was the costliest industry for breaches, significantly trailed by financial services at $6.08 million.
To combat the problem, more than two-thirds of organizations have turned to security AI and automation. Organizations that made extensive use of these tools were able to identify and contain breaches 98 days faster and reduce their average data breach costs by $1.88 million, as compared to companies that did not use them.