How much does a data breach cost in 2022?
Cost of a Data Breach Report explores ways to help mitigate risk
Why this report matters
The annual Cost of a Data Breach Report, featuring research by Ponemon Institute, offers insights from 550 real breaches to help you understand cyber risk in a changing world. This report has become a leading benchmark tool, offering IT, risk management and security leaders a lens into factors that tend to increase, or help mitigate, the cost of data breaches.
Highlights
Global report
Now in its 17th year, the report features data on breaches in 17 countries and 17 industries.
Security recommendations
Get helpful security tips from IBM Security® experts, based on findings from the study.
New research
Discover how critical infrastructure is impacted and how solutions such as extended detection and response (XDR) help mitigate costs.
Key findings
Average cost of a data breach reaches an all-time high
Data breach average cost increased 2.6% from USD 4.24 million in 2021 to USD 4.35 million in 2022. The average cost has climbed 12.7% from USD 3.86 million in the 2020 report.
More organizations are deploying a zero trust approach and seeing savings
The share of organizations deploying zero trust grew from 35% in 2021 to 41% in 2022. Organizations that don't deploy zero trust incurred an average USD 1 million greater breach costs compared to those with zero trust deployed.
Compromised credentials, phishing and cloud misconfiguration were the top attack vectors
Stolen or compromised credentials were responsible for 19% of breaches. Phishing was responsible for breaches 16% of the time. Cloud misconfiguration caused 15% of breaches.
Security AI had the biggest cost-mitigating effect
Security artificial intelligence (AI), when fully deployed, provided the biggest cost mitigation, with the average breach costing up to USD 3.05 million less at organizations with it than organizations without it.
Response times were one month faster with XDR technologies
Organizations with XDR shortened the time to identify and contain the data breach by about a month on average compared to organizations that didn’t implement it.
Hybrid cloud model had the lowest breach cost compared to public and private clouds
Breaches that happened in a hybrid cloud environment cost an average of USD 3.80 million compared to USD 4.24 million for breaches in private clouds and USD 5.02 million for breaches in public clouds.