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The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada received 686 breach of security safeguards reports under PIPEDA in fiscal 2024-25, affecting roughly 20 million Canadian accounts, per its Annual Report to Parliament. See the report count, leading causes, and industry breakdown.
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US healthcare regulators logged 710 large data breaches across every state in 2025, according to HIPAA Journal's 2025 Healthcare Data Breach Report compiled from the HHS Office for Civil Rights breach portal. California topped the state count with 69 breaches, while Georgia led in individuals affected at just over 16 million.
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Australia's OAIC received 1,205 data breach notifications in 2025, an 8% rise over 2024 and the highest total since the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme began in 2018. See the sector, cause, and year-over-year breakdown.
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UK organizations reported 3,600 data breach incidents to the Information Commissioner's Office in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone, a 16% year-over-year increase, according to the ICO's Data Security Incident Trends dataset as analyzed by the Data Protection Network in April 2026. See what causes most reports and how many actually trigger ICO action.
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Healthcare data breaches cost an average of $7.42 million in 2025, the most expensive of any industry for the 14th consecutive year, according to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report. See how every sector compares on cost, breach volume, and detection time.
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China requires breach notification to regulators within 4 hours for its most severe incidents, the fastest deadline of any country compared here, according to DLA Piper's Data Protection Laws of the World handbook (2026, 15th edition). See how China, the EU, Brazil, and five other countries compare on breach notification deadlines.
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Ransomware showed up in 48% of all data breaches in 2026, up from 44% the year before, according to Verizon's 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report. See how ransom payments, payout rates, and the most active ransomware gangs have shifted, backed by Verizon and FBI IC3 data.
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As of July 2026, 59 data breach class action settlements are open for consumer claims, per ClassAction.org's live settlement tracker, and 41% of them cap individual payouts at exactly $5,000. See how that compares to the seven largest US settlements on record, which together total more than $1.39 billion.
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A stolen intellectual property record cost an average of USD 178 in 2025, the most expensive of five data types in IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report. Customer personal data averaged USD 160 per record, and both figures fell for every category except IP.
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Across six major US data breach settlements resolved between 2016 and 2024, the compensation fund works out to less than $5 per affected person, and Equifax's own settlement site confirms its advertised $125 payment was cut for exactly that reason.
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The median economic impact of a data breach for small and midsize businesses was $38,406 in 2026, according to Verizon Business and CyberAcuView's inaugural 2026 Breach Impact Study, based on an analysis of 69,683 US cyber insurance claims. In the worst 2.5% of cases, losses exceeded 7% of a company's annual revenue.
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GDPR authorities logged an average of 443 data breach notifications a day between January 2025 and January 2026, a 22% jump, according to DLA Piper's GDPR Fines and Data Breach Survey. See how regulators actually calculate a fine once a breach is confirmed, and the biggest breach-tied penalties on record.
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41.8% of breaches affecting leading fintech companies originated with a third-party vendor, according to SecurityScorecard's 2025 analysis of 250 top fintechs. See breach costs, AI-driven attack trends, and how much consumers trust fintech apps with their financial data.
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Aflac's 2025 breach exposed 13,924,906 people's health information, per HHS OCR filings, a major insurer disclosure in 2025. See the other major carriers hit, the regulatory gap, and what changed.
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Hackers stole 3.9 million records from LexisNexis's cloud infrastructure in February 2026, exposing data tied to federal judges and DOJ attorneys. See the other major legal-sector breaches, ransomware trends, and what changed for law firms.
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MGM Resorts' 2023 cyberattack cost the company $100 million in lost business, according to an October 2023 SEC filing, one of several disclosed hotel and travel sector breaches since 2018. See how Marriott's $52 million FTC settlement, Caesars' $15 million ransom payment, and 2025's airline attacks compare.
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Data breaches spanning multiple environments, cloud plus on-premises, cost $5.05 million on average, 26% more than a single on-premises breach, according to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report. See how cloud misconfiguration drives that gap, and what a decade-long Toyota cloud exposure cost in practice.
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Public sector data breach costs rose 22% to $3.5 million in 2026, the steepest year-over-year increase of any industry IBM tracks. See government ransomware attack trends, the average ransom demand, and how a March 2026 breach at the LA City Attorney's Office unfolded.
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PowerSchool's breach generated 71.9 million victim notices, the largest single compromise the Identity Theft Resource Center recorded in 2025. See education-sector breach costs, K-12 versus higher-ed exposure trends, and the FTC and settlement fallout in 2026.
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The average retail data breach cost $3.8 million in 2026, up 7% from the year before, according to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026. See how retail ransom demands doubled in a year, how the Marks & Spencer and Co-op attacks compare, and what card data breaches cost.
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UK charities reported a data breach or cyberattack in 28% of cases over the past year, roughly 57,000 organizations, according to the UK government's Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025/2026. See donor trust figures, the Blackbaud settlement, and how charity websites compare on privacy compliance.
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Financial services led every industry with 739 data compromises in 2025, more than healthcare or any other sector, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center's 2025 Annual Data Breach Report. See average breach costs, ransomware exposure, and the largest recent vendor incidents.
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The FTC gave final approval on June 5, 2026 to a modified order against EdTech vendor Illuminate Education, requiring a full data security program and mandatory data minimization after a breach exposed 10.1 million students' records, including health-related data.
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A Washington federal court gave preliminary approval to a $6.1 million settlement over a data breach at a Planned Parenthood-affiliated testing lab that affected up to 1.6 million people.
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HHS Office for Civil Rights settled with OSF Healthcare System for $552,250 plus a two-year corrective action plan on July 1, 2026, over a 2021 ransomware breach that exposed 53,907 patients' records.
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The human element, error, manipulation, or misuse, was present in 62% of confirmed data breaches in 2026, per Verizon's Data Breach Investigations Report. See what counts as human error versus social engineering, and how the mix has shifted since 2024.
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More than 17.7 billion accounts have appeared in a data breach, per Have I Been Pwned's live tracker checked in July 2026, more than double the world's population. See how many people the Identity Theft Resource Center, Verizon, and named breaches like Equifax and Yahoo actually affected.
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On July 14, 2026, a coalition of 42 state attorneys general led by Connecticut settled bankruptcy claims against 23andMe over its 2023 genetic data breach, with $150 million in allowed claims but only $18 million in actual recovery.
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An average of 33.4 confirmed data breaches happened every day worldwide in 2025, calculated from Verizon's 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report. See the daily pace by country, sector, and year, and how it compares to the ITRC's US-only tracking.
Read article![Biggest Data Breaches of All Time: Top 40 Ranked [2026]](/_astro/biggest-data-breaches-all-time.BQZgtXr2_Zv0Kc1.webp)
Yahoo's 2013 breach exposed all 3 billion user accounts, the largest confirmed data breach on record, per Verizon's October 2017 disclosure. See the full ranked list and the caveats behind the headline numbers.
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The global average cost of a data breach was USD 4.44 million in 2025, per IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report, with the United States highest at USD 10.22 million. See the full breakdown by country and industry.
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The global average cost of a data breach fell to USD 4.44 million in 2025, per IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report, its first year-over-year decline in five years. See breach counts, causes, and detection times from IBM, Verizon, and the ITRC.
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