Benchmark
Annual IBM-sponsored study analyzing breach costs and containment times across organizations worldwide, widely cited for industry cost benchmarks.
Verizon now puts vulnerability exploitation at 31% of initial access, up from 20%. Arctic Wolf's telemetry says about 17% of assets never appear in legacy vulnerability management at all, which sets a hard ceiling on any patch program.
Reality
Adoption is near universal while production scaling stays in single digits, which an HPE practice leader reads as evidence that boards are measuring the one AI bill that is falling and absorbing the other two.
Reality
Arctic Wolf's 2026 survey has security leaders rating their teams highly and reporting incidents in the same breath. Confidence ran higher, not lower, at the organisations that got hit.
Reality
IBM puts AI-enabled attacks above one in four malicious breaches, averaging $6.04 million. The growth rate, not the average, is what should change remediation schedules.
Reality
Two years of SIEM ingestion cuts left the data layer that agentic detection will run on, and 24% of security leaders now rank visibility above staffing as their top barrier.
Reality