Average cost of data breach in India touches high of Rs 17.9 cr in 2023: IBM study

The average cost of a data breach in India reached Rs 17.9 crore in 2023, according to the IBM Security report that classified it as an "all-time high" for the report and almost a 28 per cent increase since 2020.

The most common attack type in India was phishing (almost 22 per cent), followed by stolen or compromised credentials (16 per cent). Social engineering was the costliest root cause of breaches at Rs 19.1 crore, followed by malicious insider threats, which amounted to nearly Rs 18.8 crore.

Detection and escalation costs jumped 45 per cent over the same time frame, representing the highest portion of breach costs, and indicating a shift towards more complex breach investigations.

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Artificial Intelligence and automation helped in speedy breach identification and containment for the organisations polled. About 80 per cent of studied organisations in India have limited (37 per cent) or no use (43 per cent) of AI and automation.

"IBM Security today released its annual Cost of a Data Breach Report, showing the average cost of a data breach in India reached Rs 17.9 crore in 2023 – an all-time high for the report and almost a 28 per cent increase since 2020," according to a release.

According to the 2023 IBM report, globally businesses are divided in how they plan to handle the increasing cost and frequency of data breaches.

The report found that while 95 per cent of organisations studied globally have experienced more than one breach, these organisations were more likely to pass incident costs onto consumers (57 per cent) than to increase security investments (51 per cent).

In India, 28 per cent of data breaches studied resulted in the loss of data spanning multiple types of environments (public cloud, private cloud, on-premise). This indicates that attackers were able to compromise multiple environments while avoiding detection.

"When breached data was stored across multiple environments, it also had the highest associated breach costs (Rs 18.8 crore) and took the longest to identify and contain (327 days)," according to IBM.

Artificial Intelligence and automation had the biggest impact on the speed of breach identification and containment for studied organisations.

"In India, companies with extensive use of AI and automation experienced a data breach lifecycle that was 153 days shorter compared to studied organisations that have not deployed these technologies (225 days versus 378 days)," it said.

The studied organisations that deployed security AI and automation extensively saw nearly Rs 9.5 crore lower data breach costs than organisations that didn’t deploy these technologies, the biggest cost saver identified in the report.