Data breaches cost India Inc 9.4% more in 2020, remote ops increase risk, says IBM report

MUMBAI: As India Inc increasingly adapts to a remote working model, it is expecting the cost of data breaches to increase as employee accounts are compromised, according to a new study.

The annual study by IBM Security - covering over 500 companies globally - which examines the financial impact of data breaches found that the average total cost for India Inc due to security breaches was Rs 140 million (Rs 14 crore) in 2020, an increase of 9.4% from 2019.

The average cost per lost or stolen record in 2020 was Rs 5,522, a 10% increase from 2019, it said.


The study found that over 70% of companies that have adopted a remote working model amid the Covid-19 pandemic expect that it will increase data breach costs.

On average, data breaches cost companies $3.86 million per breach and compromised employee accounts were the most expensive cause, it said.

Over 80% of incidents resulted in exposure of personally identifiable information (PII) of customers. Out of all types of data exposed in breaches, customer PII was also the costliest to businesses, it said. The biggest cause for data breaches in India were malicious attacks (53%), followed by system glitches (26%) and human errors (21%).