You may already know what a data breach can do to a business, from productivity and compliance problems to destruction of precious data that forces companies to go out of business. But these concerns take on a whole new vividness when they have dollar figures attached to them. Let’s take a look at just how much these data breaches are costing businesses, where the biggest problems lie, and why some businesses are coping better than others.

A global study conducted by IBM Security has found that the average cost of a single data breach is now a whopping $4.35 million, up 16 percent from just two years ago. To add insult to injury, 83 percent of the business affected got hit with more than one data breach. Titanic enterprises might be able to weather that degree of financial damage, but countless smaller companies surely couldn’t. These costs included direct losses due to ransomware attacks and related forms of data theft as well as indirect losses due to businesses having to raise their prices and scrambling to invest in technical security solutions.

One interesting variable pops out from the data collected in the study: the presence or absence of a zero trust strategy. Zero trust simply means that a company’s IT network doesn’t automatically trust any users regardless of whether they’re outsiders or employees. In this model, the company uses endpoint security measures, the latest firewall technologies, and other smart network safeguards to protect itself against data breaches. Companies that had a zero trust strategy in place sustained, on average, 65.2 percent less financial damage than those without one, not least because they could identify and fix the breach considerably faster,

Gravity Systems can help you reduce your company’s data breach risk. Contact us today for an evaluation of your IT system.