Recovering from a Cyber Attack

205 Days. 69 Percent. $3.8 Million. These are important numbers that incident response company Mandiant highlights in their 2015 M-Trends Threat Report and the Poneman Institute identifies in their 2015 Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Analysis report. 

Why are they important? 205 days is the median time between a data breach and discovery of that breach. This is the time that attackers are wandering around inside our networks having their way with our data and our assets. That should make us feel very violated. Perhaps more importantly though, 69 percent of the time those breaches are discovered and reported by an external entity, such as law enforcement or a customer. The Ponemon Institute reports that the average total cost of a data breach in 2014 was $3.8 million, with the average cost of stolen sensitive and confidential information at $154 per record. The healthcare industry blew that number wide open with an average cost of up to $363 per record. Talk about a kick in the gut!  So before we can even begin responding and recovering from a cyber-incident, we need to get our head around these numbers, because security professionals agree that it’s far less expensive to invest in security pre-incident than it is after the event has occurred.