The average cost of a data breach climbed to a record $4.99 million as artificial intelligence reshapes the economics of cybercrime, according to IBM's annual study released Tuesday. The 12% increase from last year reflects a 56% jump in AI-driven attacks that added roughly $1 million to the typical incident tab, a signal that the technology is lowering the barrier to entry for offenders faster than defenders can raise it.
The economics have inverted
"What's changing is the economics of cyberattacks," said Suja Viswesan, vice president of IBM Security Software. "AI is making attacks faster and cheaper, while breaches keep getting more expensive." The Ponemon Institute research, sponsored and published by IBM, examined 602 organizations hit between March 2025 and February 2026 and surveyed more than 3,550 security and C-suite leaders. The central finding: a widening gap between the speed of compromise and the speed of remediation, and that lag is where the money leaks.
United States pays double
The pain is not evenly distributed. U.S. organizations absorbed an average $11.5 million per breach, a record and roughly double the global figure, driven by higher business costs and regulatory fines. Healthcare remained the costliest sector at $6.4 million, though that represents a retreat from $7.4 million a year earlier. Financial services averaged $6.3 million and energy $5.2 million.
Criminals now dominate the ledger
Malicious or criminal activity accounted for 55% of breaches, up nearly eight percentage points from the prior study, and more than doubled the share attributed to IT failures or human error. The report also exposed a control gap: 92% of organizations that suffered an AI-related breach lacked proper AI-access controls. Yet the response is already baked into budgets, 85% of breached entities said they plan to increase security spending, and three-quarters intend to deploy AI agents more aggressively for alert triage, vulnerability management and penetration testing.
The remediation race
The irony is hard to miss: the same technology supercharging the threat is being hired to fight it. Whether that arms race narrows the discovery-to-remediation window or simply raises the baseline cost for everyone is the question the next report will answer.