LONDON, UK, 30 July, 2024 -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today released its annual Cost of a Data Breach Report revealing the average cost of a data breach in the UK reached £3.58 million in 2024, as breaches grow more disruptive and further expand demands on cyber teams. In the UK, while breach costs decreased in 2023, the report shows a 5% increase in 2024 compared to the previous year. From an industry perspective, financial services participants saw the costliest breaches across industries in the UK with average costs reaching £6.05 million, followed by professional services (£5.51 million) and technology (£5.4 million).
Lost business and post-breach customer and third-party response costs drove the year-over-year cost spike globally, as the collateral damage from data breaches has only intensified. The disruptive effects data breaches are having on businesses are not only driving up costs but are also extending the after-effect of a breach. Globally, recovery took more than 100 days for most of the small number (12%) of breached organisations that were able to fully recover.
The 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report is based on an in-depth analysis of real-world data breaches experienced by 604 organisations globally between March 2023 and February 2024. The research, conducted by Ponemon Institute, and sponsored and analysed by IBM, has been published for 19 consecutive years and has studied the breaches of more than 6,000 organisations, becoming an industry benchmark.
Some key findings in the 2024 IBM report for the UK include:
AI and Automation Deployment on the Rise 71% of UK organisations studied are deploying security AI and automation across their security operation centre (SOC), a near 13% jump from the prior year. Globally, 20% stated they used some form of generative AI (Gen AI) security tools.
Hacking the clock with AI UK organisations that employed security AI and automation extensively detected and contained an incident, on average, 106 days faster than organisations not using these technologies.
AI-Powered Security Pays Off When AI and automation technologies were used extensively, organisations incurred an average £1.06 million less in breach costs, compared to those without AI and automation deployments.
Stolen credentials lead breach causes At 15%, stolen or compromised credentials was the most common initial attack vector and represent an average total cost of £4.27 million per breach. Followed by phishing at 12% (£3.59 million) and Business Email Compromise at 11% (£4.03). Malicious insiders were the most expensive entry point (£4.36) at 10% of breaches studied.
Data Visibility Gaps 38% of breaches in UK involved data stored across multiple environments, including public cloud, private cloud and on-prem. These breaches cost more than £3.5 million on average and took the longest to identify and contain (258 days).
Key factors that increased costs - The top three factors that amplified breach costs for UK organisations were non-compliance with regulations (£287K), IoT/OT environment impacted (£246K) and supply chain breaches (£241K).
Security staffing shortages drove up breach costs
More than half of the organisations studied globally had severe or high-level staffing shortages last year and experienced an average of USD $1.76 million in higher breach costs as a result (USD $5.74 million for high levels vs. USD $3.98 million for low levels or none). This comes at a time when organisations are racing to adopt gen AI technologies, which are expected to introduce new risks for security teams. In fact, according to a study from the IBM Institute for Business Value, 51% of business leaders surveyed were concerned with unpredictable risks and new security vulnerabilities arising, and 47% were concerned with new attacks targeting AI.
Mounting staffing challenges may soon see relief, as more organisations worldwide stated that they are planning to increase security budgets compared to last year (63% vs. 51%), and employee training emerged as a top planned investment area. Globally, organisations also plan to invest in incident response planning and testing, threat detection and response technologies (e.g., SIEM, SOAR and EDR), identity and access management and data security protection tools.
In a landscape marked by increasing cyber threats, this year's report highlights critical vulnerabilities and strategic opportunities, said Martin Borrett, Technical Director, IBM Security UKI. Worldwide, organisations with severe security staffing shortages were affected by a substantial rise in breach costs. Security AI and automation are effective in supporting team efforts to identify and accelerate incident response, helping UK companies reduce both breach expenses and business impact. Robust, AI-driven security measures are essential, and addressing regulatory non-compliance and IoT vulnerabilities remains crucial.
Matthew Evans, Chief Operating Officer and Director of Markets, techUK said, The IBM 2024 Cost of a Data Breach report underscores the urgent need for businesses to invest in robust security measures, including AI-powered prevention and automation technologies. As organisations continue to adopt generative AI technologies, addressing the new security vulnerabilities that come with them and prioritise investments in security staffing and training is crucial. By enhancing security measures and leveraging advanced technologies, businesses can better protect their data and mitigate the far-reaching impacts of breaches."
Other global findings in the 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report include:
Shorter breach lifecycles - The global average data breach lifecycle hit a 7-year low of 258 days down from 277 days the prior year and revealing that technologies such as security AI and automation may be helping put time back on defenders' side by improving thr
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
LONDON, UK, 30 July, 2024 -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today released its annual Cost of a Data Breach Report revealing the average cost of a data breach in the UK reached £3.58 million in 2024, as breaches grow more disruptive and further expand demands on cyber teams. In the UK, while breach costs decreased in 2023, the report shows a 5% increase in 2024 compared to the previous year. From an industry perspective, financial services participants saw the costliest breaches across industries in the UK with average costs reaching £6.05 million, followed by professional services (£5.51 million) and technology (£5.4 million).
