Indian companies lose Rs 110 million due to data breaches: Report

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Frequent data breaches are costing Indian companies Rs 110 million on an average in 2017, more than 12 percent increase from last year’s average cost of Rs 97 million. The average size of the data breach has also increased by 6 percent and the loss of existing customers increased by 4.3 percent over the year, a study by Ponemon Institute has revealed.

The study examines the costs incurred by 39 Indian companies in 13 industry sectors due to loss or theft of protected personal data and the notification of breach victims and regulators as required by laws and business contracts. Among these companies, the average number of breached records was 33,167.

The average per capita cost of data breaches increased from Rs 3,704 in 2016 to Rs 4,210 in 2017— a 13 percent increase. Per capita cost is determined by dividing the total cost of data breaches by the size of the data breach in terms of the number of compromised records.

Effects of data breaches are more on services, financial, industrial and technology companies. They face higher per capita cost as well as they lose a greater number of customers. Comparatively public sector, research and transportation companies have a lower per capita cost.

More than two-fifth of data breaches are as a result of malicious or criminal attacks. One-third of them are due to system glitches and rest because of human negligence. The cost of data breaches in the case of criminal attacks is comparatively more than breaches happening due to other factors.

The losses are more in India compared to European countries like Germany, France and United Kingdom where organisations are quick to identify and contain breaches.

Even though the time to identify and contain the incidents of data breaches have decreased over the years, Indian organisations take an average of 170 days to detect that an incident occurred and 72 days to contain the incident.

If the time to identify and contain the incidents is reduced by 40 percent Indian organisation can save up to Rs 50 million, the IBM-sponsored study shows.