Last September’s Home Depot data breach is proving to be the perfect case study on how costs associated with cyber risk can quickly balloon out of control.
Home Depot recently reported that the breach has already cost $232 million and that number is expected to increase as more lawsuits are filed, with some believing it could reach into the billions of dollars. The majority of lawsuits have been filed by small banks that accuse Home Depot of ignoring warnings from security experts that its computer systems were vulnerable to attack, prior to the theft of approximately 56 million sets of credit and debit card data,” reports Insurance Business America.
Home Depot only had a cyber insurance worth up to $100 million to offset these costs according to a regulatory filling.