The average data breach costs companies around $4.24 million per incident according to an IBM report titled “Cost of a Data Breach Report 2021.”

This was primarily because of the COVID-19 outbreak, which saw a sudden shift to remote work, lagging behind the safety of the technology.

Due to the abrupt changes, the average cost of a data breach increased by 10% in 2021, with breaches costing an average of $1 million more when remote work was considered a factor compared with businesses without this factor.

The report also found that the healthcare sector saw a massive increase in average data breaches, rising by $2 million in 2021 to $9.23 million per incident.

Stolen account credentials were the most common cause of data breaches according to IBM. These breaches also took the longest to detect averaging around 250 days compared with 212 days for other breaches.

Names, passwords and emails were the most common type of data compromised.

For more information, read the original story in TechRepublic.