An IBM study of 550 global organizations finds the average cost of a data breach is $4.35M, up ~13% over the last two years, and 83% had more than one breach
A new report from IBM Security today reveals that data breaches are costlier and more impactful than ever before. Source: IBM and IBM .
Context & Ripple Effects
IBM’s 2022 benchmark sits in a multi-year series: the average remediation cost rose from $3.86M in the 2020 study to $4.24M in 2021 and $4.35M here. The finding that most surveyed organizations experienced more than one breach makes the cost figure a recurring exposure rather than a one-off incident measure.
Later IBM research recorded the average at $4.45M in the 2023 survey and then $4.9M in 2024, reinforcing that the 2022 increase was part of a continuing rise in reported breach costs.
First-order effects
- The 550 surveyed organizations face a benchmark average of $4.35M per breach, while the 83% reporting multiple incidents confront repeated remediation costs.
- IBM Security gains a current data point for framing breach response as an ongoing business cost, not solely a single-event contingency.
Second-order effects
- Organizations assessing security spending must account for recurrence as well as the cost of an individual breach, raising the practical value of preventing and containing subsequent incidents.
- The later rise in IBM’s reported averages strengthens pressure on security leaders to treat breach-cost benchmarks as moving targets rather than fixed planning assumptions.
Third-order effects
- If IBM’s annual series continues upward, breach remediation becomes a more persistent operating-risk category for large organizations, with resilience and detection carrying greater weight alongside recovery.
- The sequence of IBM studies points to a security market increasingly organized around limiting the frequency and impact of repeat incidents, not merely restoring systems after an initial breach.
The trend: Data-breach costs are becoming a recurring and rising enterprise-risk benchmark, as IBM’s annual surveys show repeated incidents alongside higher average losses.