According to IBM’s 2020 “Cost of a Data Breach” report, Canada placed third, behind the Middle East and the United States. The average cost in Canada is $6.35 million, an increase of 6.7 per cent from 2019. (The Logic)

Talking point: IBM’s report, which included 26 Canadian companies and examined six years of historical data, found that 80 per cent of the breaches studied resulted in the compromise of customers’ personally identifiable information. The top three sectors impacted in Canada were financial, technology and services, with 42 per cent of the data breaches being attributed to malicious attacks, 35 per cent to a system glitch and 23 per cent from human error. “Canada having one of the world’s highest average costs for data breaches shows an urgent need for businesses to make cyber resiliency a top priority,” said Ray Boisvert, IBM Canada security expert and former CSIS assistant director.