Dive Brief:

• The Ponemon Institute and IBM revealed Wednesday that the average cost of a data breach globally has reached $4 million, up 29% since 2013.

• In the United States in particular, expenses related to a data breach cost a company an average of $7.01 million, outpacing other countries. 

• Healthcare data breach costs were the highest, at $355 per record, followed by education at $246 per record. The public sector had the lowest data breach costs at $80 a record.

Dive Insight:

Whether its hacked systems or ransomware, businesses are still targets of malicious actors. While some work to extort companies for cash, others work to publicize a data base's contents. 

The Ponemon study of 283 companies found the 2016 costs worldwide related to a data breach increased to $158 a record, up from $154 in 2015. In the U.S., the average cost per record is $223. Brazil and India had the lowest costs per record, at $100 and $61, respectively.

The institute said there's a 26% probability that an enterprise will be hit by one or more data breach of 10,000 records over the next two years. Almost half of all data breaches were caused by malicious and criminal attacks, the report found.

But businesses can incur costs associated with data breaches long after the initial incident is over. The cost of lost business was highest in the U.S. at $3.97 per record, making investments in cybersecurity well worth the expense.

There was some good news—the use of encryption and incident response teams cut data breach costs by $16 per record.