global average breach cost
IBM reported this global average in its 2026 Cost of a Data Breach research.
IBM 2026 Cost of a Data Breach · 2026 ↗Updated 2026-10-04 · Identity
Identity and access management
maturity and governance statistics.
A source-first view of control coverage, exception discipline and the freshness of operating evidence. Published findings provide context; the measurement framework shows what to calculate inside your own environment.
01 / Published evidence
What the public data says.
Each figure links directly to the organization that published it. Vendor telemetry and community surveys are labelled rather than blended into one invented industry average.
used compromised credentials as initial access
The 2025 DBIR identified compromised credentials as an initial vector in 22% of reviewed breaches.
Verizon 2025 DBIR credential research · 2025 ↗median daily authentication attempts linked to credential stuffing
Verizon derived this median from SSO provider logs across the dataset it analyzed.
Verizon 2025 DBIR credential research · 2025 ↗02 / Your baseline
Measure the system you actually run.
Use these formulas consistently for at least one complete operating cycle. Keep scope, exclusions and collection dates beside the result.
Automated control coverage
Automated controls ÷ applicable controls × 100
Median exception age
Median days an approved exception remains open
Evidence freshness
Evidence items inside their refresh window ÷ all required items × 100
03 / Interpretation
A number without a denominator is decoration.
Segment results by environment, workload owner and business criticality. A falling average can hide one critical service getting worse; a rising count can simply reflect better discovery.
- Record the source system and collection window.
- Separate discovered, in-scope and actively managed populations.
- Keep medians and tail values where averages hide risk.
- Annotate architecture, policy and tooling changes.
- Recalculate after remediation instead of closing on intent.
Related benchmarks
Look at the adjacent signal.
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