The global average cost of a data breach reached a record $4.99 million in 2026, according to IBM's 2026 Cost of a Data Breach Report as summarized by Passwork. The figure is 12 percent higher than the 2025 average of $4.44 million and tops the previous high of $4.88 million set in 2024. The chart traces the global average from $3.92 million in 2019.

The United States posted an average breach cost of $11.5 million, the highest of any country in the study and an 11 percent increase over the prior year. Breaches that took longer than 200 days to resolve cost an average of $5.65 million, compared with $4.32 million for those contained faster.

AI-driven attacks accounted for more than one in four malicious breaches, a 56 percent increase from the previous year, and pushed the average cost of those incidents to about $6 million. Attacks aimed directly at AI systems also ran above the global average, with model inversion attacks averaging $6.07 million.

Shadow AI, defined as AI tools employees adopt without security approval, accounted for 43 percent of AI-related incidents in 2026, up from 20 percent the year before. Among organizations that experienced an AI-related breach, 92 percent lacked proper AI access controls, and only 40 percent of organizations extend access controls to their AI models and the data those models touch.

Organizations that deployed security AI and automation extensively recorded average breach costs $1.93 million lower and breach lifecycles 65 days shorter than organizations using none. One in four organizations in the study used no AI or automation in security operations.

IBM produced the report with the Ponemon Institute, drawing on 602 breached organizations across 16 countries and 17 industries.

Source: Passwork - https://passwork.pro/blog/cost-data-breach-2026-ai-threat/