Is your organization hit by a ransomware attack? According to IBM, involving the police significantly reduces the cost of a data breach.

In its annual report, in which IBM analyzes how much a data breach costs, the company analyzed about 553 organizations worldwide in 2022. The most striking statistic from the study is that by calling the police, you can activate a ransomware discount code.

Some interviewed organizations remain reluctant to call the police during a ransomware attack, fearing it will add complexity to the situation. This year’s study proves the opposite for the first time. Participating organizations that did not seek help from law enforcement experienced longer data breach lifecycles, averaging 33 days longer than organizations that did.

This silence also comes at a price: the ransomware victims investigated who did not seek legal advice pay an average of 425,000 euros more for the data breach than those who did.

Despite ongoing law enforcement efforts to work with ransomware victims, 37 percent of organizations surveyed chose not to engage them. Additionally, nearly half (47%) of the ransomware victims surveyed paid the ransom.

Paying the ransom and evading law enforcement can only increase the cost of the incident and slow down the response speed.

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The study contains other conclusions that are interesting for an organization. Almost 40 percent of data breaches examined resulted in data loss across multiple data environments, including public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises. This shows that cyber criminals are able to infect multiple environments without being detected.

Organizations that self-discovered the breach had nearly $900,000 less in breach costs compared to organizations where the breach was discovered by an attacker (€4.7 million versus €3.9 million).

Breaches discovered by an attacker also had a longer lifecycle of almost 80 days (320 days versus 241 days) compared to those that discovered the breach internally. The significant cost and time savings associated with early detection show that investing in these strategies pays off in the long run.