A good defense is a good offense, or maybe it is the other way around. According to IBM’s Annual Cost of a Data Breach Report for 2022, the average total cost of a data breach to global organizations is rising. But what about the cost of generating a cyber attack? Or better yet, is the growing proliferation of proactive cybersecurity controls like artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, encryption, and employee training making it more costly for cyber criminals, i.e., changing a tactical mindset, to launch a successful attack to penetrate an entity’s cyber defenses, thereby driving down success rates? And to that end, to what degree are cyber attacks frustrated as a result of this subjective cost-benefit analysis rather than pointing to any specific defense control?

These are tough questions worth considering in light of companies around the world investing an enormous amounts of financial resources to ward off the far-reaching effects of a breach with the expectation of avoiding an actual one and all its damaging collateral effects.