Ani Petrosyan
Research expert for cybersecurity and cybercrime
Data breaches worldwide - statistics & facts
Data breaches are the worst nightmare for many companies. In the second quarter of 2025, nearly 94 million data records were leaked in data breaches, impacting millions of individuals worldwide. Breached data records often end up for sale on the dark web.
One of the most significant data breaches of 2025 was the PayPal data breach of 16 million accounts. In August, cybercriminals posted about this on the dark web, claiming they had stolen the data in May 2025. The company denied that a breach happened and cited the incident of 2022, when the private information of 35,000 PayPal accounts was stolen.
A year ago, in August 2024, Jerico Pictures, Inc., trading under National Public Data, announced the breach of 2.9 billion personal data records. The shocking revelation from the data broker left millions of people in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom (UK) wondering if they might be among the victims. According to estimates, the incident is believed to have impacted every American.
In the United States, passwords were the most leaked type of private data, followed by the name of the city and users’ first names. Furthermore, small companies in the United States state that employee data gets stolen more often than the company’s intellectual property.
It takes a village to combat data breaches, and multiple factors have to be in place for an efficient cybersecurity posture, especially at challenging times for data privacy. Alongside the shortages of cybersecurity skills, there is also insufficient investment in the cybersecurity sector. With the development of generative AI, however, many challenges in cybersecurity, including skills shortage, are expected to become easier to overcome. Namely, around 65 percent of company leaders worldwide were convinced that gen AI will significantly impact the cybersecurity industry in the near future.
One of the most significant data breaches of 2025 was the PayPal data breach of 16 million accounts. In August, cybercriminals posted about this on the dark web, claiming they had stolen the data in May 2025. The company denied that a breach happened and cited the incident of 2022, when the private information of 35,000 PayPal accounts was stolen.
A year ago, in August 2024, Jerico Pictures, Inc., trading under National Public Data, announced the breach of 2.9 billion personal data records. The shocking revelation from the data broker left millions of people in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom (UK) wondering if they might be among the victims. According to estimates, the incident is believed to have impacted every American.
Impact of data breaches
Among other things, data breaches have a huge financial impact. The average cost of a data breach incident across companies worldwide is 4.44 million U.S. dollars. This includes detection, business losses, post-breach response, and notification. Among these, the detection and escalation of the data breach was the costliest segment. The industry of healthcare ranked first by the average cost of data breaches in 2025, 7.42 million U.S. dollars.What type of data gets stolen most?
Threat actors usually try to target the most sensitive information. In 2024, about 48 percent of all data breach incidents in global organizations involved customer personal identifiable information (PII), thus making it the most frequently breached type of data. Roughly four in ten data breaches involved employee personal identifiable information. Furthermore, half of social engineering attacks resulted in the loss of credentials, with accommodation and food services companies encountering the highest share of breached credentials.In the United States, passwords were the most leaked type of private data, followed by the name of the city and users’ first names. Furthermore, small companies in the United States state that employee data gets stolen more often than the company’s intellectual property.
It takes a village to combat data breaches, and multiple factors have to be in place for an efficient cybersecurity posture, especially at challenging times for data privacy. Alongside the shortages of cybersecurity skills, there is also insufficient investment in the cybersecurity sector. With the development of generative AI, however, many challenges in cybersecurity, including skills shortage, are expected to become easier to overcome. Namely, around 65 percent of company leaders worldwide were convinced that gen AI will significantly impact the cybersecurity industry in the near future.
