An organisation is set back by an average of ₹22 crore in data breach, up 13 per cent from last year’s average of ₹19.5 crore, says a recent report.
However, surge in costs notwithstanding, security lapses in artificial intelligence are still strong, the report by global tech major IBM said.
Phishing, or the act of sending fraudulent communication to extract personal information, tops cyber attacks, with 18 per cent of incidents reporting phishing.
This is followed by third-party vendor and supply chain promises at 17 per cent, while vulnerability exploitations accounted for 13 per cent.
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The research sector in India faced the highest impact from data breaches, with average cost reaching ₹28.9 crore, closely followed by the transportation industry at ₹28.8 crore and the industrial sector at ₹26.4 crore.
Shockingly, almost 60 per cent of the breached organisations did not have AI governance policy or were in the midst of developing one, said the report.
Organisations are bypassing security and governance for AI in favour of do-it-now AI adoption, the IBM report said further.
"While AI is being rapidly embedded across business operations, security and governance are being left behind. The absence of access controls and AI governance tools is not just a technical oversight; it's a strategic vulnerability," Viswanath Ramaswamy, vice president, technology at IBM India and South Asia, said.
The company has been consistent with its 'Cost of a Data Breach Report' report for last two decades, and has investigated nearly 6,500 data breaches for the same.
The average breach lifecycle, which is the mean time to identify and contain a breach, including restore services, dropped from 15 days to 263 days in India in 2025, it said.
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