Data breach average costs hit $4 million mark

The average cost of a data breach is $4 million, up 29 percent since 2013, according to Ponemon Institute and IBM data.

Ponemon conducted a study of 283 companies and found the 2016 costs related to a data breach has increased to $158 a record, up from $154 in 2015. Ponemon also concluded that there's a 26 percent probability that an enterprise will be hit by one or more data breach of 10,000 records over the next 2 years.

Among the key findings:

• Data breaches cost the most in the U.S. at $223 per record on average and $213 in Germany. Brazil and India were the lowest at $100 and $61, respectively.
• The average cost of a data breach in the U.S. was $7.01 million. In India, a breach costs $1.6 million.
• Healthcare data breach costs are $355 per record on average and education was $246. Public sector had the lowest data breach costs at $80 a record.
• 48 percent of breaches were caused by malicious and criminal attacks.
• Use of encryption and incident response teams cut data breach costs by $16 per record.
• Companies in France, Japan and Italy had the most difficulty keeping customers after a breach. The cost of lost business was highest in the U.S. at $3.97 per record.
• How fast a company responds to a data breach affects costs.