The quantity of compromised data is growing as more businesses suffer crippling security breaches. Hackers are motivated by money to acquire data, and personal information is one of the most sought-after kinds of data to steal. Even though data breaches are becoming more common, companies are still not sufficiently safeguarded. We’ve put together some data breach statistics for 2025 that cover important information from industry specifics, risks, and costs.
Why You Need To Know
A data breach, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, occurs when “data, either physical or electronic, is compromised, breached, disclosed without authorization, acquired without authorization, or accessed for an unauthorized purpose.” According to a recent study by IBM and the Ponemon Institute, data breaches have a global average cost of almost $4 million. Data breaches typically include financial information like credit card or bank account information, protected health information (PHI), personally identifiable information (PII), trade secrets, and intellectual property. Data breaches are also referred to as unintentional information disclosure, data leaks, cloud leaks, information leaks, or data spills.
Lost Cost Business
According to data breach statistics, companies ascribe about 37.5% of the four high-level data breach components to lost business costs. Data breach events can result in a variety of business costs, including efforts to minimize the loss of customers following disclosure as well as acquiring new customers, business disruptions, and revenue losses.
Reputations At Stake
A data breach has a negative impact on reputation, brand, or market image in 65% of cases. Data breach trends also negatively impact reputation, brand, and market image. When reputation management is difficult as in normal situations, it’s even tougher in the age of quick-moving global news and finicky consumers. Many firms cannot afford to have their reputation damaged due to data breaches. After the Cambridge Analytica scandal came to public attention in early 2018, Facebook saw a dramatic slide in share prices.
Recovery Time
A data breach can take as long as 70 days to recover from, according to security breach statistics. Once an organization has identified and contained a data breach, there is a long recovery process to endure. Having a dedicated disaster recovery function or team in the organization, according to security breach statistics, can reduce the average recovery time by nearly half.
The US In Spotlight
According to breach reports, the USA has been the target of 57% of all attacks and has stolen almost all of the records. Despite a 17% decrease in attacks in the USA compared to H2 2017, the country remains the most popular target. The Notifiable Data Breaches law has been implemented in Australia, resulting in a dramatic increase in incidents, going from 18 to almost 300.
Big Secrets
Despite independent tracking of cyberattacks, there might be many incidents that go unreported, since only 53% of organizations share data breaches and incident response information with government and industry associates. It is also thought that sharing information has a direct effect on enhancing the organization’s security posture as well as reducing the cost of detecting and preventing data breaches. Incident response plans that are also efficient are also a key concern.
Passwords Galore
Of the 28% of businesses that believe customer data or passwords are the data criminals desire most, 12% believe their financial information is most desired, while another 12% believe their strategic plans are most desired. R&D information, M&A information, and intellectual property are slightly less threatened, although they are also less threatened.
Slightly Behind?
Less than 10% of organizations say that their information security function currently meets their requirements. Furthermore, many believe that significant improvements have yet to be made. Information security statistics reveal that smaller firms are more likely to be behind the curve. Although 78% of larger companies say that their information security function is at least partially satisfying their needs, only 65% of their smaller counterparts agree, which is a dramatic contrast to the increasingly proficient cybercriminals.
Conclusion
Having knowledge of data breaches is the first step in cybersecurity. Using these technologies will help reduce the damage when breaches occur. Saving and transmitting plaintext, or sending it in plaintext, is one of the worst things you can do for internal data security. This is the most significant cause of data breaches, otherwise the greatest surge in data breaches. The most important thing to remember when you store or transfer data is to encrypt it. Multi-factor authentication should be used to prevent unauthorized access in addition to protecting it from unauthorized access.