Even as awareness about cybersecurity has increased, Canadian business are still grappling with the staggering costs associated with cybercrime, according to a recent report by IBM.
The study, which drew data from a survey of 26 organizations in Canada, found that the average cost of a cybersecurity breach in 2023 is $6.94 million.
While this figure represents a decrease from the previous year average cost of $7.05 million, it is also the second-highest annual cost reported by IBM in the study’s nine-year history.
Beyond the immediate financial implications, the report shed light on the aftermath and resources required to handle the fallout from a cyber attack. It found that it takes an average of 215 days for companies to identify and contain data breaches.
Chris Sicard, security consulting and delivery leader for IBM Canada, said the cleanup process “has a very long tail,” with companies having to make significant investments to prevent future incidents.
“Once you are dealing with an attack, and you are working to contain that breach – even though it’s not in the news cycle anymore – there is an awful lot of investment and work that is required to make sure it never happens again,” he told the Canadian Press.
The report said cybercriminals, especially ransomware attackers, primarily target industries with little tolerance for downtime.
Financial services and energy companies are the hardest hit, according to IBM, experiencing average damages of nearly $12 million and $9.37 million per cyber breach, respectively.
Furthermore, more than half of the surveyed companies reportedly passed on cyber incident costs to their customers by implementing price increases rather than bolstering their cybersecurity infrastructure.
While there are organizations that have invested on advanced cybersecurity measures, the impact of these efforts was found to pale in comparison to the growing sophistication of technology employed by cybercriminals.
“They have the same access to technology that we do,” said Sicard. “It’s just that they’re using it for evil instead of for good.”
Overall, the average cost of a data breach in Canada has increased by more than $1.5 million since IBM began its survey in 2015.
Sicard said the worsening situation is also due to the growing reliance on cloud storage and the rise of remote work, which have expanded the attack surface for cybercriminals.
Another contributing factor is the ongoing war in Ukraine. Sicard noted that the conflict has exacerbated the threat of state-sponsored hackers attempting to infiltrate critical infrastructure for sabotage or espionage.
“I wish I was an optimist, but I do think it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” he said.
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