ARMONK, N.Y., July 29, 2026 One in four malicious breaches were AI-enabled – a 56% increase over last year – and these breaches cost an average of $6 million, roughly $1 million more than the global breach average of $4.99 million, according to IBM's 2026 Cost of a Data Breach Report.
These attacks, compromised of mostly deepfake impersonation and AI-enabled malware, are reshaping breach economics. Attacks are getting faster and cheaper to launch, while breaches keep getting more expensive to find and fix. Companies that reported using AI and automation in security operations cut breach costs by an average of almost $2 million dollars, yet one in four organizations have still not adopted these tools in their security operations.
This growing imbalance—where attacks can be launched for thousands while breaches cost millions—is fundamentally changing the economics of cyber risk.
Frontier AI Threats Driving Earlier Action
Organizations are starting to act on future risk, rather than waiting for an incident. In separate follow-on research conducted by Ponemon Institute, 85% of organizations said they plan to increase security spending after becoming aware of advanced frontier AI cyber capabilities – compared to just 64% that reported in the initial research that they plan to increase security spend after experiencing a breach.
But a gap remains where attackers are moving fastest. While more than 50% reported using agents for threat detection and containment, only 18% apply agents to vulnerability management, leaving known exposures to linger even as AI shortens exploit windows. Three quarters of organizations say frontier AI threats are prompting them to rethink how agents are deployed across their security operations.