Good news for businesses around the world: as reported in IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025, the average cost of a single data breach has fallen for the first time in five years.
That average cost is still estimated at $4.44 million, which means we aren’t out of the woods yet.
Discover the good, the bad, and the ugly of the state of cybersecurity in 2026, and how you can ramp up your protections with the latest AI-powered tools.
Good News in Cybersecurity
There’s more to celebrate than the average cost of a data breach falling for the first time in 5 years. The average cost to detect and escalate potential threats has also dropped by 10% since 2024, meaning that our security tools are finally becoming more effective (both at detecting threats and cost-wise).
The time to identify and contain a breach has also significantly dropped to a nine-year low, falling to 241 days. Not only is this something worth celebrating, but it also carries on the downward trend we’ve seen since 2021, meaning that security systems are collectively becoming better at detecting and mitigating threats.
Why We’re Not Out of the Woods Yet
Despite these gains in cybersecurity, we are far from a world where every business is 100% protected. While the global cost of a data breach is down, for example, it actually increased in the United States. The sector most impacted is still healthcare, with other government systems not far behind.
There’s also a risk of cybersecurity burnout. While AI tools have ramped up what a single team can do, the fact is that entry-level roles experience high turnover, job satisfaction in the sector has fallen to 66%, and burnout is on the rise. Yes, security tools can help bridge the gap and give specialists a bit of breathing room, but the fact is that the responsibility of security doesn’t fall on a SIEM or MDR’s shoulders; it falls on the staff.
How to Better Protect Your Business, for Less
The good news is that you can better protect your business for less, thanks to the average cost of protecting your business dropping and the time to detect and stop threats being shorter than ever. Of course, that’s only if you deploy the best proactive tools:
· Managed Detection and Response
One of the best ways to protect yourself from the full cost damage of a leak is to detect it as fast as possible and lock it down. One solution promising to do just that is known as managed detection and response, or MDR.
What MDR does is essentially monitor your system around the clock for threats and, in doing so, helps hunt down malicious actors. It does this by linking up with your IT infrastructure to analyze user behavior to identify patterns that could indicate a threat.
Most importantly, it automatically triages those incident reports, allowing your cyber security specialists the ability to focus on the high-priority incidents and protect their peace of mind, rather than try to deal with every potential threat like it’s code red.
· Fully Set Up User Access
Sometimes the most effective solutions are the easiest. At the end of the day, your own staff are going to be one of the biggest threats to your business, and, most often, not because they have any malicious intent themselves.
To set up rock-solid user access protocols, you’ll want to:
- Ensure every user login ID and password is unique and not used anywhere else.
- Restrict the data any given user can access to what they need. For high-level employees, provide multiple user login credentials to silo data.
- Employ endpoint protection to prevent threats from local devices (like your employees’ phones) from infecting your system.
- Consider providing your staff with work devices to enhance protection
· Reduce Shadow Data and IT
Shadow in the IT world refers to any dataset, software tool, or other digital entity in your system that you are unaware of. This happens often when migrating to a new system from an old legacy system, when you have multiple cloud solutions, and more. The older your company is, the greater the risk of shadow IT.
These shadow figures are harmless on their own, but they are also unprotected because you are unaware that they exist. That means they’re a weak point that could easily be exploited. Find everything connected to your system, and either protect it or delete it.
