More than eight out of 10 organizations have suffered at least one breach of notes in the last year, and 44 percent have lost input two to five times in the same period, according to new research from the Ponemon Institute.

There’s some good news for companies that have a comprehensive encryption strategy, however. These organizations had significantly lower rates of documents breaches.

details breaches open organizations to reputation damage and lawsuits — witness the recent details loss at grocery-chain Hannaford, where more than 4 million credit- and debit-card numbers were exposed within December 7, 2007, and March 10, 2008, resulting in at least 1,800 stolen, and at least one federal class-action lawsuit.

The study was sponsored by encryption vendor PGP Corporation, and looked at 975 U.S.-based IT and business managers. It revealed that the costs of info breaches continue to rise, up 43 percent from 2005 to an average of nearly $200 per record compromised. The

Ponemon study estimates an average cost of $6.3 million per breach.

John Dasher, director of product management with PGP, told us that it’s not clear whether there are more breaches these days or they’re simply more publicized. “But what’s absolutely quantifiable is that those organizations with a protection and encryption strategy in place suffer fewer breaches. It’s irrefutable,” he said. Only 6 percent of companies with a full enterprise encryption strategy suffered two to five breaches, compared to 15 percent of companies that have no such strategy.

Platform Solutions

While the survey looked primarily at large enterprises, Dasher said that the lessons learned apply to all businesses, regardless of size. Three-quarters of respondents said that deploying a platform-based encryption solution was an crucial part of their safety measure plan; that type of solution allows central management and deployment of multiple applications, Dasher explained.

“I don’t care whether…

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