The average cost of recovering sensitive data hijacked by hackers in Southeast Asia has reached an all-time high of USD3.05m, marking a 6% increase this year, according to IBM Security's “Cost of Data Breach” report. The study found that nearly half of the affected organisations opted to pay ransoms, while 37% tried to resolve the issue independently, paying USD470,000 more on average to recover their data. The report also highlighted that some entities were reluctant to involve law enforcement in ransomware attacks, fearing it would complicate the situation, leading to breach life cycles that were 33 days longer on average.