Report by IBM
2026 Cost of a Data Breach Report
Key Findings
41% of ransomware attacks exploited brand reputation.
AI-enabled malicious breaches increased by 56% over the previous year.
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.