“The Cost of a Data Breach Report offers IT, risk management and security leaders a lens into factors that can increase or help mitigate the rising cost of data breaches. Now in its 17th year, this research — conducted independently by Ponemon Institute, and sponsored, analyzed and published by IBM Security® — studied 550 organizations impacted by data breaches that occurred between March 2021 and March 2022. The breaches occurred across 17 countries and regions and in 17 different industries.We conducted more than 3,600 interviews with individuals from organizations that were impacted by the data breaches. During the interviews, we asked questions to determine the cost to organizations across different activities related directly to both the immediate and prolonged response to the data breaches.As in previous years’ reports, this year’s data provides a view of how dozens of factors impact the costs that keep adding up after a data breach occurs. Additionally, the report examines root causes, short-term and long-term consequences of data breaches, and the mitigating factors and technologies that allowed companies to limit losses…Furthermore, the report takes a broader look at some leading contributors to higher data breach costs. For the first time, the report looks at the effects of supply chain compromises and the security skills gap. The report examines areas of security vulnerability from the cloud to critical infrastructure. And we take a deeper dive than past years into the impacts of ransomware and destructive attacks. Also studied is the phenomenon of remote work that continues to be a reality for many organizations past the peak of the COVID pandemic…”