MENA is Second Globally by the Average Cost of Data Breach

IBM published its annual ‘Cost of a Data Breach’ 2022 report which assesses the cybersecurity status of businesses globally, including Saudi and the UAE, and the costs that are incurred by cyber threats.

According to the report, the MENA region, represented by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, continues to hold the second position globally by the average total cost of a data breach for a business ($7.64M up from $6.93M in 2021).

As for industries, globally the healthcare industry has had the highest average cost of a breach for 12 consecutive years, followed by financial institutions.

83 percent of organizations surveyed have had more than one data breach in their organization, which is challenging since the mean time to identify a data breach in 2022 is 207 days and the mean time to contain in 70 days. In 63 percent of cases, these breaches led to increases in prices passed on to customers.