Long accustomed to working for clients in the world’s largest economy, U.S. law firms find themselves with yet another first: bearing the highest cost for data breaches globally, according to IBM’s “2016 Cost of Data Breach Study,” which surveyed 383 companies from over 12 countries that experienced a data breach of 3,000 to more than 101,500 records.
The study found that the average cost of a breach worldwide rose from $3.79 million in 2015 to $4 million in 2016, with the average cost of each stolen record rising $4 to $158. For companies in the U.S., however, the average cost of breach was around $7 million, up from $6.53 million in 2015, with the average cost of each stolen record at $221. Germany and Canada were a distant second and third, with the average cost around $5 million per breach.
