Experian: AI Was Involved in 40% of 2025 Data Breaches; Agentic AI Forecast as 2026's Top Threat
What Happened
Experian analyzed roughly 5,000 breaches from 2025 and found AI involvement in 40%. The firm forecasts that autonomous AI systems — running phishing, social engineering, and lateral movement without a human in the loop — will become the leading cause of data breaches in 2026. The forecast aligns with Mandiant data showing 28.3% of CVEs are now exploited within 24 hours of disclosure.
My Take
The defensive playbook hasn't caught up. Most security teams still operate on weekly patch cycles and quarterly tabletop exercises. When the attacker is an autonomous agent that retries 10,000 times overnight, that cadence is malpractice. The companies that will absorb the losses are mid-market firms with mature-looking compliance programs and immature actual defenses. Cyber insurance premiums are about to reprice violently — that's the canary worth watching, not the breach reports themselves.
Read Original Source