of breaches started with vulnerability exploitation
Verizon says vulnerability exploitation became the leading breach entry point in its 2026 DBIR.
Verizon 2026 DBIR announcement · 2026 ↗Updated 2026-10-04 · Application security
Penetration testing
adoption and scale statistics.
A source-first view of how widely the capability is used and how quickly its footprint is growing. 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 ↗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 ↗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.
Managed coverage
Actively managed assets ÷ discovered assets × 100
Standard-path adoption
Workloads using the approved path ÷ eligible workloads × 100
Quarterly footprint change
(Current assets − prior-quarter assets) ÷ prior-quarter assets × 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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Gritt can map the data sources, calculate a defensible baseline and implement the changes behind it.
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