The longer it takes an organisation to respond to a data breach, the worse the damage will be. Undetected breaches give cyber criminals more time to exfiltrate information, giving them more information and more opportunities to cause damage.
But how long should it take an organisation to identify and address an incident?
According to the 2021 Cost of a Data Breach Study, it’s 30 days. For incidents that are dealt with within this timeframe, organisations spend $1 million (about £930,000) less on average compared to those that took longer.
Unfortunately, the study found that not only do organisations struggle to address a security incident within 30 days, but many are unable to do so within six months.
In fact, according to the researchers, organisations take 187 days on average to detect a data breach, during which time the damage will escalate.
How can organisations get better at spotting data breaches? The best place to start is by understanding the most likely ways that a security incident will occur.
In this blog, we explain 5 of the most common causes of data breach and provide advice on how to identify them.
