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CyberEdge 2026 Report: 80.7% of Surveyed Organizations Report Successful Cyberattacks

Oct 20, 2026 · Original Report (PDF) ↗

Original report publisher: not verified. Report discovered via Awesome Annual Security Reports.

Summary

CyberEdge’s 2026 survey found 80.7% of participating organizations reported successful cyberattacks in the prior year. Phishing overtook malware as the leading concern, while confidence in defenses rose alongside expectations of future compromise.

Key points

CyberEdge surveyed 1,200 security professionals across 17 countries and 19 industries in November–December 2025; respondents worked at organizations with at least 500 employees.
Respondents reporting at least one successful attack in the previous 12 months declined from 81.6% to 80.7%, while the share reporting six or more attacks rose from 28.7% to 30.4%.
Despite record-high perceived security posture, 67.1% considered a successful compromise in 2026 somewhat or very likely, up from 64.0% in the previous survey.
Phishing and spear phishing replaced malware as the highest-rated threat concern. A shortage of skilled cybersecurity personnel remained the leading barrier to effective defenses.
Adaptive and evasive malware led AI-enabled threat concerns at 45.5%. Confidential-data leakage through prompts and prompt injection or LLM poisoning were the highest-rated obstacles to developing AI applications.
Nine in 10 organizations expected security budgets to rise, and at least 75% reported using or implementing AI-enabled tools for multiple security tasks.
The report states a global margin of error of 3% at 95% confidence and cautions that smaller country and industry samples should be treated as anecdotal.

Article Details

Publisher: CyberEdge Group
Scope: 2026 global survey report on security posture, threats, investments, and practices across 17 countries and 19 industries. Survey conducted in November and December 2025.
Sample Size: 1,200 IT security professionals at organizations with at least 500 employees; global margin of error ±3% at 95% confidence. Country and industry results are considered anecdotal because of smaller samples.
Key Statistics: 80.7% of surveyed organizations reported at least one successful cyberattack in the previous 12 months, versus 81.6% in the 2025 report; 30.4% reported six or more, versus 28.7%.
64.1% of surveyed organizations reported ransomware victimization in the previous 12 months, unchanged from the preceding report.
55.0% of ransomware victims paid a ransom, up from 40.7% in the preceding report.
60.8% of ransom payers recovered their data, up from 54.3% in the preceding report; payment did not guarantee recovery.
Phishing and spear-phishing ranked as the greatest cyberthreat concern, scoring 4.02 out of 5 and displacing malware after 10 years.
Recommendations: Base actionable survey-driven decisions on global results rather than the smaller country or industry samples.
Treat user security awareness and supply chain security programs as urgent defensive priorities.
Apply least privilege to human and non-human identities and maintain consistent permissions across environments.
Design guardrails for autonomous security agents and introduce autonomy in stages, beginning with alerts before permitting broader actions.
Prepare for quantum computing risks by inventorying vulnerable high-value assets, planning risk mitigation, and obtaining SaaS vendors' quantum-resistant encryption migration timelines.