The rapid increase in the volume and sophistication of cyberattacks is starting to take its toll on organizations’ bottom line. According to a new study conducted by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of IBM Corp., the average cost of data breaches has increased by nearly 30 percent over the past two years to $4 million.

The research firm reached the figure after compiling data from 388 organizations across 12 countries that fell victim to hacking in recent quarters. The biggest group hailed from the U.S., where the impact of data theft is more severe than in all the other regions reviewed by the study. Ponemon’s researchers found that the financial damage averages $221 per stolen record for American respondents compared to $213 in Germany, $211 in Canada and $193 over in France. The numbers grow even starker when broken down by industry.

The segment with the dubious honor of topping the cost ranking is the healthcare sector, where companies lose an average of $355 per stolen record. Ponemon says that education is a distant second at $246, while financial services took third place with $221. Somewhat surprisingly, the public sector ended up all the way at the bottom of the list despite experiencing several major breaches in recent memory, most notably the OPM hack. But this phenomenon can be easily explained by the Ponemon’s breakdown of the expenses incurred in the aftermath of an attack.

The research firm has identified lost business as the biggest financial consequence of data breaches, which naturally affects commercial entities more than government agencies with no competition to worry about.  Moreover,  Ponemon also spotted a correlation between the total financial impact of attacks and the time it takes to detect them. Leaks discovered in less than 100 days cost companies an average of $3.23 million, while those that go unnoticed for longer cost about $1 million more. As a result, CIOs are investing aggressively in new technologies that can help speed up incident response, which is good news for vendors like IBM. The company saw annual revenues from its security business top $2 billion for the first time in fiscal 2015.

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