As more states ratchet up the penalties for data breach notification and remediation, the costs of even small (sub 10,000 record) breaches soar. Even small professional practices often can count several thousand consumer or business records in their systems. Exposing several thousand in a breach and having to offer credit monitoring is unfortunately too common.
 
Given a recent survey indicating 72% of consumers offered credit protection services after a breach use it, the cost for organizations is increasing. This element alone translates into six-figure breach costs for a few thousand records before we consider other legal and technical costs associated with incident response.