• by Ray Schultz , June 6, 2018

Data breaches have hit 44% of all companies in the last 12 months, resulting in an average cost of nearly U.S. $1 million to deal with just for IT, according to a study by SailPoint Technologies Holdings Inc. That total excludes fines, lost revenue and brand damage.

For UK firms, the hit is £700,000.

In addition, firms were hit with an average of 30 breaches apiece in the last 12 months. But not all firms all knew it.

Of 400 IT decision-makers surveyed, 9% could not say with certainty whether their firms had been breached.

“IT leaders face an uphill battle. Hackers are increasingly more sophisticated and more organized, and governments are adding new layers of complexity with regulations like GDPR,” states Paul Trulove, chief product officer of SailPoint. “Yesterday’s security strategies are simply not sufficient to address these security and compliance requirements,” he adds.

Trulove recommends implementing “a comprehensive identity governance program," which he says "helps organizations answers the critical questions of who has access to what, who should have access to what, and how is that access being used, providing the much-needed visibility into today’s hybrid, constantly evolving IT environment.”