As of June 2025, the most significant data breach incident in the United States was the Yahoo data breach that dates back to 2013-2016. Impacting over three billion online users, this incident still remains one of the most significant data breaches worldwide. The second-biggest case was the January 2021 data breach at Microsoft, involving about 30 thousand companies in the United States and around 60 thousand companies around the world.

As of 2024, the average cost of a data breach in the United States amounted to **** million U.S. dollars, down from **** million U.S. dollars in the previous year. The global average cost per data breach was **** million U.S. dollars in 2024. Cost of a data breach in different countries worldwide Data breaches impose a big threat for organizations globally. The monetary damage caused by data breaches has increased in many markets in the past decade. In 2023, Canada followed the U.S. by data breach costs, with an average of **** million U.S. dollars. Since 2019, the average monetary damage caused by loss of sensitive information in Canada has increased notably. In the United Kingdom, the average cost of a data breach in 2024 amounted to around **** million U.S. dollars, while in Germany it stood at **** million U.S. dollars. The cost of data breach by industry and segment Data breach costs vary depending on the industry and segment. For the fourth consecutive year, the global healthcare sector registered the highest costs of data breach, which in 2024 amounted to about **** million U.S. dollars. Financial institutions ranked second, with an average cost of *** million U.S. dollars for a data breach. Detection and escalation was the costliest segment in data breaches worldwide, with **** U.S. dollars on average. The cost for lost business ranked second, while response following a breach came across as the third-costliest segment.

Pay attention to the following cybersecurity statistics to learn how to protect yourself from attacks.

As of February 2025, the United States ranked first by the average cost of a data breach, ***** million U.S. dollars. The average cost of data breaches in the Middle East was **** million U.S. dollars. Benelux followed in the ranking, with **** million U.S. dollars. In the measured period, the global average data breach cost was **** million U.S. dollars. Phishing scams in the U.S. Breached data often ends up in the hands of threat actors who use it for malicious purposes, including online scams. Phishing continues to be a major threat in North America, particularly on smartphones. In the second quarter of 2023, the region recorded the highest number of phishing and malicious attack attempts globally. The United States was particularly affected, with ** percent of U.S. citizens reporting being targeted by scam texts, e-mails, and calls on a daily basis. Additionally, phishing and spoofing were the most common types of cybercrime, impacting *** thousand individuals in 2023. These attacks led to financial losses, with U.S. victims reporting nearly ** billion U.S. dollars in damages throughout the year. U.S. users and data privacy Despite only ** percent of internet users in the United States being highly knowledgeable about data privacy and cybersecurity, a significant portion of users demonstrated caution and awareness in protecting their information. In fact, over half of surveyed U.S. users reported being somewhat confident in knowing the right steps to take in the event of a cyberattack. Furthermore, ** percent of U.S. users actively decline cookies on websites, reflecting their increasing concern for data protection. Many respondents also take additional steps to safeguard their digital privacy, such as limiting or avoiding clicking on ads as well as not answering phone calls due to cybersecurity risks.

Introduction

Data Breaches Statistics: In recent years, data breaches have emerged as a major threat to both businesses and individuals. As the digital world grows, the frequency, scale, and impact of these breaches have surged, resulting in significant financial, reputational, and legal repercussions for organizations. The number of data breaches hit record highs, compromising millions of sensitive records.

This increase can be attributed to several factors, including rising cybercrime, inadequate data security practices, and the growing sophistication of hacking techniques. Data from cybersecurity experts reveal a notable rise in breaches within the healthcare, financial, and retail industries.

As the fallout from these breaches intensifies, it has become increasingly important for both businesses and consumers to understand the trends and scope of these incidents. This introduction will explore the latest statistics and developments, offering insights into the evolving landscape of data breaches and their wide-reaching effects.

Between January and September 2024, healthcare organizations in the United States saw 491 large-scale data breaches, resulting in the loss of over 500 records. This figure has increased significantly in the last decade. To date, the highest number of large-scale data breaches in the U.S. healthcare sector was recorded in 2023, with a reported 745 cases.

As of 2024, the average cost of a data breach in Canada was **** U.S. dollars, down from **** million U.S. dollars in the previous year. The global average cost per data breach was **** million U.S. dollars as of 2024, up from **** million U.S. dollars recorded in 2023.

According to a 2024 survey, 63 percent of companies worldwide planned to increase their cybersecurity investment following a data breach. This represents a 12-percent increase from the previous year.

Washington law requires entities impacted by a data breach to notify the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) when more than 500 Washingtonians personal information was compromised as a result of the breach. This dataset is a collection of various statistics that have been derived from these notices, and is the source of data used to produce the AGO’s Annual Data Breach Report.

According to a 2024 survey of small business leaders and IT professionals in the United States, more than nine in 10 respondents said they notified their customers when impacted by a data breach, while only five percent of respondents reported not alerting their impacted customers of the data breach.

Percentage of enterprises impacted by specific types of cyber security incidents by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) and size of enterprise.

Introduction

Workplace Data Privacy Statistics: In our digital era, workplace data privacy is an important concern for organisations globally. The 2025 Data Privacy Benchmark Study from Cisco shows that 94% of organisations consider privacy a business imperative, and that two-thirds of organisations (98%) said that they report privacy metrics in their board meetings, indicating a global level of maturity around data protection at the board and management levels that we have not always seen in corporate governance.

But while organisations may be focused on data protection, breaches, increasingly internal breaches from employees, and system misconfiguration, etc, are still very real, formidable threats. The 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report indicates that the global average total cost of a data breach is now $4.88 million, a 10% increase from the previous year and the highest amount of total cost ever recorded by IBM.

This data tells us that data privacy in the workplace has become critical to safeguard our personal, professional, and organisational information, and to foster loyalty and trust.

In 2024, manufacturing saw the highest share of cyberattacks among the leading industries worldwide. During the examined year, manufacturing companies encountered more than a quarter of the total cyberattacks. Organizations in the finance and insurance followed, with around 23 percent. Professional, business, and consumer services ranked third, with 18 percent of reported cyberattacks. Manufacturing industry and cyberattacks The industry of manufacturing has been in the center of cyberattacks in a long time. The share of cyberattacks targeting organizations in this sector in 2018 was at 10 percent, while in 2024, it amounted to 26 percent. The situation is even more compliacted when we look at the cyber vulnerabilities found in this sector. In 2024, critical vulnerabilities in manufacturing companies lasted 205 days on average. IT perspective and prevention With recent technology developments, cybersecurity is crucial to an organization’s success. Realizing this, companies have been gradually increasing cybersecurity investments. Thus, in 2024, the cybersecurity budget worldwide was forecast to increase to nearly 283 billion U.S. dollars. Roughly nine in ten board directors of companies worldwide in professional services and media and entertainment industries say they expect an increase in the cybersecurity budget.

This is a quarterly notice to congress containing statistics on data breeches for fiscal year 2014 for the first quarter (2014 October 1, 2013 through December 31, 2013). The report contains information about date of the incidents, location of the events, number of notification letters, and number of credit protection letters sent.

Data breach density in the United States has significantly increased between the third quarter of 2022 and the third quarter of 2023. In the third quarter of 2022, the number of exposed data points per thousand individuals in the country was 26, while it went down to 24 in the third quarter of 2023.

Graph and download economic data for Employed full time: Wage and salary workers: Information security analysts occupations: 16 years and over: Men (LEU0257861100A) from 2011 to 2024 about analysts, information, occupation, males, full-time, salaries, workers, 16 years +, securities, wages, employment, and USA.

In 2024, the average cost of an industrial data breach reached its peak with an average of 5.56 million U.S. dollars, up from 4.73 million U.S. dollars in 2023. In comparison, the global average cost of a data breach across all studied industries was 4.88 million U.S. dollars.

This dataset contains statistics on government agencies' collaborative information security and incident reporting of security events on a monthly basis over the years, providing the public with an understanding of the overall trend of information security threats.