Middle East witnesses higher cost per data breach than global average

The average cost per data breach incident in the Middle East is higher than the global average and it is the second-highest after the US, according to a new study.

Sponsored by IBM Security and conducted by the Ponemon Institute in 17 countries between August 2019 and April 2020, the 2020 Cost of a Data Breach Report states that the average cost per data breach in the US stands at $8.64m, followed by the Middle East at $6.52m and Canada at $4.50m.

In 2019, the average cost was $5.97m in the Middle East.

A breach is defined as an event in which an individual’s name and a medical record and/or a financial record or debit card is potentially put at risk — either in electronic or paper format.

The global average cost per breach is $3.86m.

In contrast, Latin American and Brazilian organisations had the lowest average total cost at $1.68m and $1.12m, respectively.

In Saudi Arabia and the UAE, breaches cost companies $188 per lost or stolen record on average, which represents an increase of 8.5% from 2019 while the cost of a data breaches in these two countries has risen by 9.4% over the past year.

Root cause: Malicious attacks

In the Middle East, malicious attacks were the root cause for 59% of the data breaches while system glitches at 24% and human errors at 17%.

In the Middle East, 23% of the organisations have fully deployed security automation while 40% have partially deployed security automation and 37% haven’t deployed security automation at all.

In the study, the average time to identify a breach was 207 days and the average time to contain was 73 days, for a combined 280 days.

In 2019 the average time to identify was 206 days and the average time to contain was 73 days, for a combined 279 days.

In the Middle East, the average time to identify a breach in 2020 was 269 days and the average time to contain was 100 days, for a combined 369 days compared to 381 days in 2019.

The Middle East comes second, after Brazil (380 days), to identify and contain a data breach and healthcare were found to incur the highest per-record cost of a data breach, followed by financial services and then technology.

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