Cost of a Data Breach Report 2020

Report

Published November 2020

IBMcloud

This is the 15th year the Ponemon Institute has conducted the research to produce the annual Cost of a Data Breach Report, including the past five years this report has been sponsored and published by IBM Security. Our hope is that businesses can use this research to drive forward with innovation while maintaining customer trust at a time when data breaches and cybersecurity incidents are risks for organizations of all types and sizes.

The report has become one of the leading benchmark tools in the cybersecurity industry, offering IT, risk management and security leaders a point-in-time view of the factors that either mitigate or exacerbate the cost of data breaches. This report also offers a view of data breach trends, demonstrating both consistencies and fluctuations in the costs we have analyzed over time.

For the 2020 Cost of Data Breach Report*, Ponemon Institute recruited 524 organizations that experienced data breaches between August 2019 and April 2020. To ensure the research is relevant to a broad set of companies, the organizations in the study comprise of various sizes, spanning 17 countries and regions as well as 17 industries. Our researchers interviewed more than 3,200 individuals who are knowledgeable about the data breach incidents in their organizations.