IBM
Reports
All Statistics
41% of ransomware attacks exploited brand reputation.
AI-enabled malicious breaches increased by 56% over the previous year.
Active ransomware and extortion groups increased by 49% year over year.
Vulnerability exploitation accounted for 40% of incidents observed by IBM X‑Force in 2025.
Manufacturing accounted for 27.7% of incidents observed by IBM X‑Force.
8% of organisations reported not knowing if they had been compromised by an AI-related breach.
Security incidents involving shadow AI led to more personally identifiable information (65%) being compromised compared to the global average (53%).
Healthcare breaches remained the most expensive, averaging $7.42 million.
The number of infostealers delivered via phishing emails per week increased by 84% year-over-year.
The global average cost of a data breach hit a record $4.88 million in 2024.
The top initial access vector observed in 2024 was a tie between exploitation of public facing applications and use of valid account credentials, both representing 30% of X-Force incidence response engagements.
25% of organizations have not adopted AI and automation in their security operations.
Financial services breaches cost on average $6.3 million.
64% of organizations plan to increase security spending after experiencing a breach.
More than 50% of organizations use agents for threat detection and containment.
75% of organizations said frontier AI threats are prompting them to rethink how agents are deployed across security operations.
More than 20% of organizations reported a breach targeting AI models or applications.
27% of breaches were caused by compromised APIs, applications, or plug-ins.
35% of ransomware attacks exploited employee data.
31% of ransomware attacks exploited intellectual property.
25% of malicious breaches were AI-enabled.
AI-enabled breaches cost an average of $6 million.
AI-enabled breaches cost roughly $1 million more than the global breach average.
Energy sector breaches cost on average $5.2 million.
18% of organizations apply agents to vulnerability management.
27% of breaches were caused by cloud misconfigurations affecting AI workloads.
Using AI and automation in security operations cuts breach costs by almost $2 million on average.
37% of breached organizations encrypted sensitive data both at rest and in transit.
62% of AI-driven attacks targeted critical infrastructure sectors.
North America accounted for 29% of total cases observed by IBM X‑Force.
Manufacturing is the top targeted sector for the fifth consecutive year.
North America became the most-attacked region for the first time in 6 years.
Publicly disclosed victim counts increased by roughly 12%.
North America's share of total cases increased from 24% in 2024 to 29%.
Attacks that begin with exploitation of public-facing applications increased by 44%, largely driven by missing authentication controls and AI-enabled vulnerability discovery.
Infostealer malware led to the exposure of over 300,000 ChatGPT credentials in 2025.
Large supply chain and third-party compromises have nearly quadrupled since 2020.
Organisations using AI and automation extensively throughout their security operations saved an average of $1.9 million in breach costs.
Of those compromised by an AI-related breach, 97% report not having AI access controls in place.
63% of organisations opted not to pay ransom demands last year, compared to 59% the year prior.
Organisations that used high levels of shadow AI observed an average of $670,000 in higher breach costs.
Security incidents involving shadow AI led to more intellectual property (40%) being compromised compared to the global average (33%).
The healthcare sector saw a $2.35 million reduction in costs compared to 2024.
60% of AI-related security incidents led to compromised data.
Organisations using AI and automation extensively throughout their security operations reduced the breach lifecycle by an average of 80 days.
Of the organisations that have AI governance policies in place, only 34% perform regular audits for unsanctioned AI.
The global average cost of a data breach fell to $4.44 million, marking the first decline in five years.
Among organisations that reported recovery following a data breach, most took more than 100 days on average to do so.
31% of AI-related security incidents led to operational disruption.