Cyber criminals are costing global organisations an average $12.7m a year, nearly a 100% increase on five years ago, according to a new study.

The 96% jump in cost includes an average $1.6m to tackle a single attack, and comes on top of a 26% year-on-year jump to $11.6m in 2013, according to IT security research group the Ponemon Insitute.

Its fifth annual report on the state of cyber security, sponsored by HP Security and titled 2014 Cost of Cyber Crime Study, also found that firms are taking 33% longer to resolve successful hacks than five years ago.

Meanwhile, the number of cyber attacks has grown 176% since 2010, with an average 138 successful hacks a week, compared to 50 per week back in 2010.

Ponemon Institute founder Larry Ponemon said: "Business disruption, information loss and the time it takes to detect a breach collectively represented the highest cost to organizations experiencing a breach.

"The annual Cost of Cyber Crime research continues to provide valuable insights into the rising cost of cyber attacks to help organizations across all industries understand the serious financial impact that can result if measures are not taken to put solutions, process and expertise in place to minimize risk."

Based on findings derived from 2,000 respondents, the study found distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, malicious code and malicious insiders were responsible for 55% of the costs of cyber crime.

Meanwhile, the average time to resolve an attack – 45 days – incurred a cost of $1.5m, up from last year’s $1m cost for a 32-day period, found the institute.

But it also found that advanced security intelligence tools like Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), intrusion prevention systems and big data analytics helped firms to detect and contain attacks and save costly clean ups.

Art Gilliland, senior VP for enterprise security products at HP, said: "No amount of investment can completely protect organizations from highly sophisticated cyber attacks, but improving and prioritizing your organization’s ability to disrupt the adversary with actionable intelligence solutions such as SIEM, can significantly improve attack containment and reduce the overall financial impact."

Firms with a SIEM solution saved $5.3m per year, an increase of one-third since last year. Organisations with IPS and next-generation firewalls said they experienced a 15% return on investment.