- Canadian businesses are losing an average of $6.98 million to data breaches, according to IBM.
In its new Cost of a Data Breach Report, the tech giant unpacked the financial impact hackers have on Canadian business. According to the company, the nearly $7-million sum is actually a 10.4 per cent increase from 2024. It adds that shadow AI (unsanctioned AI tools) is driving up the costs of each breach by about $308,000 per business.
IBM says it found that phishing scams were the most common initial attack vector, costing Canadian companies an average of $7.91 million per breach itself a 24 per cent increase from last year. The impact of the breaches also varies depending on the industry. For example, the financial sector lost nearly $10 million to breaches, while pharmaceutical companies and industrial sectors lost about $8 million and $8.39 million, respectively.
IBM says it gathered the qualitative data for this report by conducting over 3,470 separate interviews with individuals at 600 organizations that suffered a data breach between March 2024 and February 2025.
It should be noted, however, that IBM is leveraging this data to encourage businesses to use more AI tools to protect their assets. According to IBM, companies who adopted security AI and automation reduced breach costs to $5.19 million, versus $8.53 million for those organizations who didnt. It also claims that companies using these AI technologies were able to identify breaches within 118 days on average, versus 162 days for organizations not using them.
And naturally, IBM has a financial incentive to encourage such AI business, given that its planning to invest more than US$150 billion (about C$207 billion) into American AI tech over the next five years alone.
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Source: IBM
