Verizon's 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report, now in its 19th edition, found that vulnerability exploitation has overtaken stolen credentials as the leading entry point for data breaches for the first time in the report's history, accounting for 31 percent of breaches analyzed. The report attributes part of the shift to AI tools that have compressed the time between a vulnerability's discovery and its exploitation from months to hours.

The report, based on more than 22,000 confirmed breaches, also found that mobile-based social engineering, including fake text messages and voice calls, is succeeding 40 percent more often than traditional email phishing as attackers adapt to more security-aware employees. Employee use of unauthorized "shadow AI" tools at work nearly tripled over the past year, rising from 15 percent to 45 percent of employees, a trend Verizon says is now among the most common sources of non-malicious data leakage.

Third-party and supply chain involvement in breaches rose 60 percent year over year and now factors into 48 percent of all breaches tracked, while AI-driven bot traffic on the internet grew 21 percent month over month during the reporting period. Daniel Lawson, Verizon Business's senior vice president of global solutions, said the findings reinforce that fundamental security practices remain the most effective defense even as the speed of AI-driven threats increases.

Source: Verizon - https://www.verizon.com/about/news/breach-industry-wide-dbir-finds