For the past five years, data breaches have grown more costly each year, reaching an average of $7.2 million per breach in 2010, according to a study by the Ponemon Institute and Symantec. Part of the reason is that businesses are being forced to respond faster to breaches than they did in the past, and that's driving up the cost.

The more records compromised in a breach, the higher the cost, according to the "2010 Annual Study: U.S. Cost of a Data Breach."  On average, breached companies paid $214 per record last year, which is considerably higher than the $204 paid on average in 2009.  

The most costly breaches result from criminal or malicious attacks, and these are rising, the study found.  The average cost in 2010 for this kind of breach was $318 per record, which is 43 percent higher than in 2009. The most common threat, however, was not cybercriminals but negligent employees. Forty-one percent of breaches in 2010 resulted from negligence, but the per-record cost is relatively low, at $196.

One bright note in the study appears to be a finding that the number of breaches caused by system failures fell to 27 percent last year.  The researchers suggest that organizations are doing a better job using new technologies and enforcing compliance to make sure their systems are able to prevent and mitigate breaches.

For more:
-see the 2010 Annual Study: U.S. Cost of a Data Breach

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