IBM: 92% of AI Incidents Traced to Missing Access Controls
IBM studied 602 companies: 92% of those hit by AI incidents had no basic access controls in place. Average damages came to $5.33M — versus $4.70M for conventional attacks.
In 2026, a study conducted by IBM showed that out of 602 companies that experienced AI related breaches, 92% did not properly set up fundamental access control policies for their AI software. The most common methods of entry were through compromised APIs and cloud services rather than vulnerabilities within the AI model itself. The cost of an AI breach averaged at $5.33M whereas a typical data breach would average at $4.70M.
This isn’t because AI poses a new type of risk but rather because we are not treating AI software like we would any other enterprise software. If the attacker is also using AI, then the cost increases even more significantly to $6.04M and will continue to grow.
Source: the-decoder.com
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Author
Evgenii Arsentev
PhD · Chief Executive Officer, digital health
Articles · Latest articles