Data breaches are a common consequence of the online age and they are costing millions of dollars to companies and to consumers. The Phenom Institute’s 2010 US Cost of a Data Breach study said that “the average organizational cost of a data breach increased to $7.2 million from $6.8 million in 2009.” In fact, Identity protection company IdentityHawk reported that there were 44 publicly-known breaches last month alone, affecting 678,614 online records.
In its listing “The IdentityHawk August 2011 Identity Breach Report,” the company said that each victim lose an average $4,841. Recovering ones identity took longer at 330 hours.
In stressing the importance of taking care of your personal information, Jeff Paradise, executive director for IdentityHawk, said:
“Since an identity breach can cost a person more than $4,000 and take 330 hours to recover your identity — knowing if you are in danger and stopping it before it starts is critical. To make sure your identity is safe, you should always know if any of your personal information is in danger of being hacked or compromised. Armed with alerts of possible fraud, our members are guided with the immediate steps to make secure their identity.”
If you think this figure is alarming, you should consider that this report is from one identity protection company only. There’s more out there and you should really be alarmed.
Remember, there are one million cybercrime victims daily and identity theft is just one of its long list of crimes.
