"The largest increase in cost was the category of customer churn, which was really interesting but what my US colleagues said is everyone is receiving so many notifications of a privacy breaches that they (companies) are becoming numb to the whole thing.

"So when these companies receive the eighth data breach notification in a year they probably just throw it away. If you are a retail customer and receive a breach notice you will stop buying the products and services and in the banking industry customers stop online banking in retail if the breach involves some identifier used for identity theft." Ponemon said what was left out of the report were the repeat "data breach" offenders. Ponemon said one financial services company based in the US had six separate data breaches in 18 months, however the six affected people are no longer customers.

Ponemon was directly involved in the creation of the Californian Law, a law now accepted by 30 US states requiring immediate disclosure to citizens in the event of a data breach. He said this had a very positive effect on improving privacy practices and hopes to see similar laws adopted in Australia.

"I believe if we compare apples to apples the Australian privacy laws are much more rigorous and we in the US can learn great lessons from Australia," he said.

Many organizations still do not recognize the value of their data. Kaspersky Labs says virtual property is often more valuable than household goods.