AI automation
What a Data Breach Costs, and Why Your AI Tools Should Keep Data Close
IBM's 2024 study put the global average cost of a breach at 4.88 million dollars. The lesson for small firms is to limit where data travels.
The headline number
IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024 put the global average cost of a breach at 4.88 million US dollars, about ten percent higher than the year before and the largest yearly jump since the pandemic. The average breach lifecycle, from occurrence to containment, was 258 days.
Read the number carefully
The average comes from breached organizations of many sizes, so a small company's exposure will differ. The useful point is the direction: breaches are getting more disruptive, and much of the cost is lost business and the effort of responding, not only the technical clean-up.
What this means when you add AI
Every new tool is another place where your data can live. Before connecting an AI service to customer or financial records, ask where the data is stored, who can read it, whether it is used to train models, and how you can delete it. Prefer tools that process data where you control it, and give each tool the least access it needs.
Keeping data close
At MayTech Labs we build AI systems that answer from your own documents and can be deployed under your control, so the data you rely on stays where you decide it should.
