AI breaches cost $5.33M — and 92% lacked basic locks
ibm reports 92% of firms hit by ai security incidents lacked access controls, driving breach costs to $5.33m, proving basic hygiene outweighs model choice in security.
ibm's latest research with the ponemon institute across 602 companies found that 92% of organizations experiencing ai security breaches failed to implement adequate access controls. incidents involving ai cost an average of $5.33 million, significantly higher than the global average of $4.99 million, and peaked at $6.04 million when attackers themselves utilized ai tools. the study highlights that security failures typically stem from compromised apis, connected applications, or misconfigured cloud services rather than the ai models themselves, regardless of whether they are open-source or proprietary. this suggests that enterprises are prioritizing model adoption over foundational security protocols, creating expensive vulnerabilities.