Financial services logged 739 data compromises in 2025, more than any other industry tracked, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center's 2025 Annual Data Breach Report, published January 29, 2026. That is the fourth straight year the sector has topped ITRC's industry rankings, and it comes as the average financial services breach now costs $6.29 million, per IBM's newest Cost of a Data Breach Report.
Below is how the 739-compromise figure compares to other industries, what a financial services breach costs today, how ransomware is playing out at banks and credit unions specifically, and what the largest recent vendor incident looked like from the inside.
How many financial services breaches happened in 2025?
Financial services topped ITRC's industry rankings with 739 compromises in 2025, ahead of healthcare's 534, professional services' 478, manufacturing's 299, and education's 188. Those five sectors accounted for the bulk of the 3,322 total US data compromises ITRC tracked for the year, itself a record, up 5% from 2024's 3,152 and a 79% jump over the last five years.
Figure 1: The five most-breached US industries by compromise count, 2025. Source: Identity Theft Resource Center, 2025 Annual Data Breach Report.
ITRC's report also flags a transparency problem that makes financial services breaches harder to analyze than the raw count suggests: 70% of all 2025 breach notices, across every industry, did not disclose how the attack happened, up from 65% in 2024. Criminals attacking financial services firms have also shifted priorities, according to ITRC, toward stealing static identifiers such as bank account numbers and Social Security numbers that support long-term identity fraud, rather than easily replaced data like credit card numbers.
How much does a financial services data breach cost?
A financial services breach cost $6.29 million on average in 2026, up 13% from $5.56 million in 2025 and close to the $6.08 million IBM recorded in 2024, according to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report series. That three-year swing, a drop followed by a sharper rebound, makes financial services one of the more volatile industries in IBM's cost data rather than one moving steadily in either direction.
Figure 2: Average financial services breach cost by year. Source: IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report, 2024, 2025, and 2026 editions.
Financial services now sits second only to healthcare, whose $6.64 million average cost in 2026 fell 11% from 2025's $7.42 million, making healthcare the only major industry where costs declined this year even as it kept the top spot for the 13th straight year. If your business collects account numbers, Social Security numbers, or other data that falls under GLBA's Safeguards Rule, you can generate a privacy policy that documents the legal basis, retention periods, and breach-notification commitments regulators and customers expect to see first.
How exposed is the financial sector to ransomware?
59% of financial services organizations hit by ransomware in the past year reported their data was successfully encrypted, up from 49% the year before, according to Sophos's State of Ransomware in Financial Services 2025 report, based on a survey of 369 IT and cybersecurity leaders at financial firms. That is a meaningful reversal: encryption rates had been falling across most industries as defenses improved, and financial services moving the other direction suggests attackers are getting through more often, not less.
Figure 3: Share of financial services ransomware victims whose data was encrypted, past 12 months. Source: Sophos, State of Ransomware in Financial Services 2025.
Figure 4: The compliance path a financial firm follows after a breach under GLBA's Safeguards Rule. Source: FTC Safeguards Rule summary, as applied to breach notification triggers.
What did the largest recent financial services vendor breach look like?
The clearest recent example of financial services' third-party risk is the Marquis Software Solutions breach, disclosed on or around December 3, 2025, roughly four months after the underlying attack. Marquis, a Texas-based marketing and compliance software vendor used by hundreds of community banks and credit unions, was breached on August 14, 2025, after attackers exploited its SonicWall firewall. The company has said the incident affects roughly 672,000 individuals, down from an earlier estimate of 1.6 million, across at least 74 US banks and credit unions. Exposed data varied by institution but included names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, taxpayer ID numbers, and in some cases payment card details.
Figure 5: Recent landmark financial services incidents and cost trends, 2024 to 2026. Source: BleepingComputer, SecurityWeek, ITRC, IBM.
A single vendor breach reaching 74 separate banks and credit unions illustrates why financial services' compromise count stays high even when individual institutions run tight security programs of their own: a shared software vendor, marketing platform, or payment processor can turn one incident into dozens of separate breach notifications across the sector.
The Bottom Line
Financial services has now led every major US industry in breach count for four consecutive years, and 2026's cost data shows the sector paying more for it again after a brief dip in 2025. The pattern behind the 739-compromise figure is consistent with what happened at Marquis: attackers increasingly reach financial institutions through a shared vendor rather than breaching each bank directly, and ransomware crews are succeeding at encrypting data more often than they were a year ago. Any financial firm handling nonpublic personal information needs breach-notification language and a documented security program that hold up under GLBA's Safeguards Rule, not just a generic privacy policy.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many financial services data breaches happened in 2025? 739, more than any other industry tracked, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center's 2025 Annual Data Breach Report published January 29, 2026. Healthcare was second with 534 compromises, followed by professional services at 478.
How much does a financial services data breach cost on average? $6.29 million in 2026, up 13% from $5.56 million in 2025, according to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026. It is the second-costliest industry after healthcare's $6.64 million.
What was the largest recent financial services vendor breach? The Marquis Software Solutions breach, disclosed in December 2025, exposed roughly 672,000 individuals across at least 74 US banks and credit unions after an August 2025 ransomware attack that entered through the vendor's SonicWall firewall.
What percentage of financial services ransomware attacks result in encrypted data? 59% of financial services organizations hit by ransomware in the past year reported their data was encrypted, up from 49% the year before, per Sophos's State of Ransomware in Financial Services 2025 survey of 369 IT and security leaders.
This is one entry in a broader look at data breach trends: see Data Breach Statistics 2026: Key Facts and Global Figures for the full industry picture, and Data Breach Cost by Industry 2026 for how financial services compares to healthcare, public sector, and every other tracked industry. A dedicated look at small-business breach figures and the next post in this series covering retail data breaches are planned for this cluster but not yet published on this site.
Where the Numbers Come From
- Identity Theft Resource Center. (2026). "2025 Annual Data Breach Report: Record Number of Data Compromises in 2025." Published January 29, 2026. 739 financial services compromises, 3,322 total US compromises.
- IBM Newsroom. (2026). "IBM Study: One in Four Malicious Breaches are AI-Enabled." Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026, published July 29, 2026, based on 602 breached organizations, March 2025 to February 2026.
- IBM. (2024). "Cost of a data breach 2024: Financial industry." $6.08 million average financial services breach cost.
- Sophos. (2025). "The State of Ransomware in Financial Services 2025." Survey of 369 financial services IT and cybersecurity leaders.
- BleepingComputer. (2025). "Marquis data breach impacts over 74 US banks, credit unions." December 2025.
- SecurityWeek. (2026). "Marquis Data Breach Affects 672,000 Individuals." Revised individual count following the original disclosure.
- BleepingComputer. (2024). "Evolve Bank says data breach impacts 7.6 million Americans." LockBit ransomware breach, July 2024.
Note: All figures verified as of September 2026. The Marquis Software individual-count figure has been revised downward once already, from an initial estimate near 1.6 million to roughly 672,000; treat it as subject to further revision as the investigation continues. This post's figures are refreshed at least twice a year to track new ITRC and IBM report editions.
