http://healthitsecurity.com/2013/06/14/data-breach-costs-decline-malicious-attacks-increase-in-us/
By Kyle Murphy, PhD
Health IT Security
June 14, 2013
The cost of data breaches is on the decline, but a new source of breaches is on
the rise, according to a recent survey by the Ponemon Institute. In the 2012
Cost of Data Breach Study, the organizational cost of dealing with data
breaches has gone down from $5.5 to $5.4 million with the cost per record
dropping from $194 to $188. In the United States, the healthcare industry only
trails behind transportation in terms of per capita cost for data breaches. The
cost per head is $305, which places it behind transportation ($316) but ahead
of 11 other industries (e.g., communications, pharmaceutical, industrial).
Considering how frequently subject matter experts compare data security and
privacy approach of the healthcare and financial industry — often suggesting
that the former take a cue from the latter — the fact that financial costs $50
less per capita ($254) than healthcare lends weight to that argument.
So why certain industries tend to have higher-than-average costs? It has to do
with oversight. “Specifically, heavily regulated industries such as healthcare,
communications, pharmaceuticals and financial services tend to have a per
capita data breach cost substantially above the overall mean of $188,” states
the report.
What should prove unsettling is what has emerged as the leading cause of these
data breaches: malicious or criminal attacked. This is the first study by the
Ponemon Institute to indicate these types of attacks as the most frequently
encountered by organizations. In terms of distribution, human error (33%) and
system glitches (26%) trailed the leader malicious or criminal attacks (41%).
[...]
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