The business impact of a series of high-profile data breaches has been thrown into stark light, as a new study shows that the average cost of such an incident is £1.4m.

Incidents such as the HM Revenue & Customs loss of 25m child benefit records and the theft of credit card information from the parent company of retailer TK Maxx has heightened public concerns of data safety. But until now there has been scant information about the business impact of such episodes.

Privacy research firm, the Ponemon Institute studied 21 serious breaches, involving between 2,500 records to 125,000. The most serious incident is estimated to have cost the firm involved almost £3.8m.

The chief cost for businesses affected was reported to be loss of business: 36 per cent of respondents report higher than average custom churn rates following an incident.

And while those affected appear to have learned from the lessons, by subsequently deploying encryption and data protection technologies, Ponemon Institute chairman Larry Ponemon is scathing about lax attitudes in the UK. He suggested UK businesses leaders are five years behind their US counterparts in recognising the threat.

“Businesses and government in the U.K are just now coming to realise the impact a data breach can have on an organisation and its customers,” he said.

In related news, anti virus vendor F-Secure has launched the latest version of its Anti Virus for Windows Servers software solution, featuring improved malware scanning technology and better performance, according to the firm.

The announcement follows F-Secure's recent entry into the software-as-a-service space, with the launch last week of its Protection Service for Businesses (PSB) solution.

PSB is designed to automate the protection of desktop computers, laptops and file servers and free up the IT department for other tasks, according to F-Secure. It features an easy-to-use web-based management interface alongside firewall, intrusion prevention, application control, rootkit detection and proactive protection capabilities with the vendor’s DeepGuard technology.