Data Breach Costs Top $200 Per Customer Record

alphadogg writes "The cost of a data breach increased last year to $204 per compromised customer record, according to the Ponemon Institute's annual study. The average total cost of a data breach rose from $6.65 million in 2008 to $6.75 million in 2009. The Ponemon Institute based its estimates on data from 45 companies that publicly acknowledged a breach of sensitive customer data last year and were willing to discuss it. In tallying the cost of a data breach, the Ponemon Institute looks at several factors, including: the cost of lost business because of an incident; legal fees; disclosure expenses related to customer contact and public response; consulting help; and remediation expenses such as technology and training."

Comments

bogus numbers

[Lord Ender]

The vast majority of companies hide the fact that they are breached (constantly, in many cases). It costs them very little to just rebuild the hacked server, smack the admin who set root's password to 'root', and then pretend nothing happened.