Data Breach Costs: Damage and Danger are Greater than Many Realize

"These figures are likely to be very conservative and may well be confined to the actual cost of the breach remediation and measurable loss of revenue,” Fisken told Infosecurity in an email. “There are other hidden costs which are much harder to quantify, for example reputational damage, illustrated by the battering a company’s share price can take in the wake of a much-publicized breach as in the Target case, further hit by [CEO] Steinhafel’s departure. Reputational damage can also be the area from which there's the longest road to recovery. Most would agree that the cost of recovering a lost customer is many multiples of the cost of acquiring a new customer in the first place.”