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In 2026, insider threats are probably a bigger risk than you think. In fact, they could cost your organization $19.5 million a year.
But it’s not really a problem with hackers, spies, or malicious employees. Instead, it’s about negligence, training, and IT privileges. Often, the most expensive mistake is a stolen credential doing exactly what you allowed it to do.
These are just some of the insights from our survey of over fifty insider threat statistics in 2026. Read on to get the full story.
Insider threat statistics 2026: The cost of insider risk
It’s easy for organizations to assume that malicious external hackers are the only problem they need to worry about. But insider threats are a huge issue that many underestimate. Here are some insider threat statistics to illustrate the true scale of the problem:
- 77% of organizations experienced insider-driven data loss in the past 18 months.³
- Insider risk security incidents now cost organizations an average of $19.5 million a year.¹
- This figure has risen sharply in the last few years: From $17.4 million in 2024 and $16.2 million in 2023.¹
- Often, much of this revenue loss can come from a single significant incident. 41% of respondents to a Fortinet report said the financial impact of their most significant insider-driven data loss incident was between $1 million and $10 million.³
- Another report places that number even higher: A single insider-driven data exposure, loss, leak, or theft event cost organizations an average of $13.1 million.⁵
- According to Fortinet, 76% of respondents cited losses over $100,000 due to insider-related activity.³
- In fact, 45% of respondents cited ‘revenue or financial loss’ as the primary consequence of their most significant insider risk. This was followed by ‘reputational damage’ (43%), ‘operational disruption’ (39%), ‘regulatory exposure’ (36%), and ‘IP theft’ (29%).³
And the problem is getting harder to manage, not easier:
- Across 2025, a DTEX/Ponemon Institute report identified 7,490 insider risks across 354 organizations.¹
- Between 2018 and 2025, the number of incidents discovered more than doubled from 3,269 to 7,490, an increase of 129%.¹
- Across the same time period, the number of insider risks per organization also rose from 21 to 25.¹
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s a very small number of employees that generates most of these incidents:
- Just 8% of employees account for 80% of security incidents.⁵
But not all insider threats are coming from within your organization. Hackers are now regularly targeting companies through their vendors, suppliers, or partners:
- Breaches with third-party involvement have increased by 60% year-over-year, reaching 48% of total breaches.²
More broadly, hackers are increasingly targeting insiders as part of more complex, multi-stage attacks. This includes techniques like phishing, credential misuse, and social engineering:
- The human element was present in 62% of breaches, a slight increase from the previous year’s 60%. Social engineering was the third most common breach pattern, representing 16% of all breaches.²
Clearly, insider risk is a huge issue – and organizations need to put this at the center of their security strategy in 2026.
Negligence: The real story of insider risk
You don’t have to look far through the data to spot the real story here. Malicious employees contribute to a comparatively small number of insider-related incidents. Instead, employee negligence and poor user training are much more common:
- In 2026, 53% of insider risks were caused by ‘employee or contractor negligence’. ‘Malicious or criminal insiders’ caused 27% and ‘outsmarted insiders’ caused 20%.¹
- Another study found that 62% of incidents were caused by ‘negligent or compromised users’. In contrast, just 16% of incidents involved ‘confirmed malicious intent’.³
- Insider negligence is also the fastest-growing category of insider risk, associated with losses of $10.3 million a year, a rise of 17%.¹
Most of this negligence comes down to everyday business users simply trying to do their job:
- Verizon found that 75% of internal actor breaches were caused by ‘everyday end users’. The next largest category was ‘System Admin’ (19%) and ‘Developer’ (4.1%).²
- The main motives for privilege misuse of any kind in 2026 were ‘convenience’ (60%), ‘financial’ (33%), ‘espionage’ (4%), ‘grudge’ (4%), and ‘fun’ (2%).²
- When it comes to lost and stolen assets, ‘insiders losing track of their devices’ is around four times as common as ‘theft by financially-motivated actors’.²
- When it comes to insider risks, organizations are most concerned about ‘careless, negligent or uninformed employees’ (73%), followed by ’employees directly involved in handling of sensitive data’ (62%), ‘departing employees’ (55%), ‘disgruntled employees’ (43%), and ‘third-party partners’ (43%).³
Crucially, the cost of these insider-related attacks is often higher than malicious ones:
- According to DTEX/Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a ‘negligence-based’ risk was $747,107 and for ‘outsmarted employee’, it was even higher, at $842,462. For ‘malicious attacks’, the number was lower than both of these, at $742,125. The average cost across all three categories was $777,231.¹
How hackers target insiders as the weak link in your defense
None of these stats are news to hackers. They know that employee negligence is often the simplest and most reliable route into your IT environment. And overwhelmingly, they use phishing and social engineering as their entry point:
- There were 5,302 confirmed incidents of social engineering in 2025, according to Verizon, of which 3,814 involved confirmed data disclosure.²
- 69% of organizations are worried about sensitive data leaving the organization ‘via email’, more than any other channel. This is followed by ‘cloud storage’ (61%), ‘genAI tools’ (56%), ‘personal webmail’ (55%), ‘removable media/storage’ (47%), and ‘messaging apps’ (44%).³
Despite the rise of voice and SMS-based phishing activities, email remains overwhelmingly the most popular choice for hackers:
- 98% of phishing attacks involved the Email, according to Verizon. This was followed by ‘social media’ (25%) and ‘web application’ (24%).²
But hackers are also increasingly mixing email with other attack vectors. And they’re often more successful when they do:
- 41% of social engineering breaches involve social vectors other than just email.²
- The median successful ‘click rate’ in voice and text messaging is 40% higher than via email.²
Containment might be improving, but detection is as hard as ever
Data also shows that organizations are getting better at containing insider threats once identified. But they’re as hard (or harder) to detect than they ever have been:
- Containment time for insider threats has dropped from 81 days to 67 days, a 17% improvement year-over-year.¹
- 93% of respondents to a Cogility/Cybersecurity Insiders report said they find insider threats as difficult or harder to detect than external cyberattacks.⁶
- Only 23% say they have strong confidence in their ability to detect insider threats before significant damage occurs.⁶
- Only 12% have mature predictive risk assessment models that are capable of proactively identifying insider threats.⁶
How are organizations fighting insider risks?
Not all organizations underestimate insider threats. In fact, a growing number now operate dedicated insider risk management programs:
- 63% of organizations now operate an insider risk program, with spend rising to 19% of IT security budgets.¹
- According to Fortinet, there are several options for who’s responsible for these programs. This most common choice was ‘security/SOC teams’, followed by ‘data protection/security’ (26%), ‘dedicated insider risk team’ (12%), ‘broader IT team’ (9%), and ‘risk management team’ (9%).³
But whoever is managing insider threat risks, several challenges are common to all organizations. Much of this comes down to the complexity of the IT environments and the lack of visibility over how people are using them:
- 52% of respondents to a Fortinet report say the biggest barrier to effective insider risk is ‘monitoring SaaS and hybrid environments’. This is followed by ‘tool complexity’ (49%), ‘lack of skilled staff’ (46%), and ‘organizational silos’ (42%).³
- 72% of respondents to the same report said they lack insight into how users interact with sensitive data across endpoints and cloud applications.³
- At the same time, 91% of organizations struggle to ensure employee compliance, and 96% acknowledge their protection is incomplete.⁵
- 18% of respondents said they have an ‘optimized and unified internal risk management strategy’. 51% say tools are ‘in place but fragmented’, with limited integration/oversight. 25% said ‘insider risk policies exist, but tech support is limited or inconsistent’. 6% of respondents have ‘no formal insider risk program’.³
The cost of containing insider threats
It’s perhaps unsurprising, therefore, that containing insider threats remains a complex and expensive business:
- The share of IT security budgets allocated to insider risk management has more than doubled, increasing from 8.2% to 19% in 2025.¹
- 72% of organizations say their budgets for insider risk or data protection are increasing, and 27% report significant growth over the past year.³
- According to DTEX/Ponemon, the average cost to contain an insider threat rose from $211,021 in 2024 to $247,587 in 2025.¹
- The same report found that ‘containment’ was the single most costly defense activity related to insider threats, significantly higher than ‘incident response’ ($158,233), ‘remediation’ ($129,402), and ‘investigation’ ($117,526). In contrast, the lowest-cost activity, ‘escalation’ was just ($39,728).¹
- Incidents contained within 30 days cost $14.2 million annually, compared to $21.9 million when containment exceeds 90 days.¹
But despite the high cost, the data suggests that even these high investments are more than paying off:
- 63% of organizations with insider risk management programs avoid seven insider incidents a year and save $8.2 million in breach costs.¹
- Of the 63% of organizations with an insider risk management program, 49% say their program is very or highly effective at preventing insider incidents.¹
Tools and techniques against insider threats
So, what do these insider risk management programs actually involve? What tools and techniques are organizations using to keep their IT environment safe?
- Next-generation solutions, such as modern data loss prevention and insider risk management, are already in use at 32% of organizations.³
- 53% of organizations monitor insider activity through a ‘SIEM/log monitoring platform’, followed by 49% using ‘endpoint detection’, and 47% using ‘legacy data loss prevention tools’.³
- Only 28% of organizations combine both regular security awareness training and continuous monitoring for policy violations.⁵
- Organizations are more likely to report implementing AI-powered monitoring and protection tools (48%) than training employees to recognize AI exploitation (44%) or creating specific AI usage policies (41%).⁵
Clearly, not all insider threat defense strategies are the same. Detailed research from DTEX/Ponemon Institute and Fortinet suggests that some techniques are much more effective than others. Most notably, legacy data loss prevention tools seem particularly ill-equipped for the task:
- Among security investments, ‘identity management/privileged access management’ delivers the highest cost savings ($6.1 million), followed closely by ‘behavioral intelligence/user behavior analytics’ ($5.1 million).¹
- Only 47% of respondents say their data-loss prevention tools help to prevent sensitive data from leaving the organization, with far fewer reporting deeper visibility.³
- 66% of respondents say that ‘real-time behavioral analytics’ is their biggest priority for a next-generation DLP solution. This is followed by ‘day-one data visibility across environments’ (61%), ‘shadow AI/SaaS application control’ (52%), ‘data tracking from its source’ (38%), and ‘privacy-respecting monitoring’ (33%).³
- 64% agree that native collaboration tools are insufficient.⁵
Which industries are affected by insider risks?
Insider threats don’t impact industries equally:
- This year, the industry that suffered more because of insider-related activity was Telecoms (42%), followed by Retail (23.1%) and Financial (15%).⁴
Telecoms is disproportionately affected due to its role in identity verification and the popularity of hacking techniques like SIM swapping. For Retail and Financial, hackers are more likely aiming to directly access sensitive customer, financial, or business information.
The AI blind spot
As organizations increasingly race to deploy AI across the organization, a new blind spot is opening: Shadow AI. Many organizations simply don’t have visibility over the AI tools and agents in use across the IT environment:
- Shadow AI is now the third most common non-malicious insider action in 2025, a fourfold increase in percentage vs. the previous year.²
- 92% of organizations acknowledge that generative AI has fundamentally changed how employees access and share information, yet only 13% have formally integrated AI into their business strategies.¹
- 73% believe that unauthorized AI use is creating invisible data exfiltration paths, but 18% have fully integrated AI governance into their insider risk programs.¹
- 44% believe malicious use of AI agents will significantly or moderately increase the risk of data theft, yet only 19% classify AI agents as equivalent to human insiders.¹
- 67% of users are using non-corporate accounts on corporate devices to access AI services.²
At the same time, it’s not just about the AI tools in your organization. Increasingly, hackers are using AI to execute complex attacks at scale:
- The median threat actor researched or used AI assistance in 15 different documented techniques, with some actors leveraging as many as 40 or 50.²
- ‘Phishing’ is the leading AI-assisted threat vector, at 44%. That’s followed by ‘exploit’ (32%) and ‘credential abuse’ (27%).²
But AI can be an opportunity for security as well as a challenge. That’s because proactive organizations are using AI to improve their defense:
- 42% of organizations now use AI to detect or prevent insider risks.¹
- 71% of users cite behavioral intelligence as essential, and 58% cite ‘avoided financial impact’ as a primary benefit.¹
- 19% of organizations have deployed AI agents in daily workflows, with 71% of these rating them important or extremely important for early insider risk detection.¹
What have we learned?
There are a lot of statistics on insider threats in this piece – and we hope they’ve given you a detailed understanding of the insider threat landscape in 2026. But for our money, these are the three numbers you need to keep in the back of your mind:
- $19.5 million a year is the average cost of insider-related security risks that you could lose in an average year, without robust protection.
- 77% of organizations have experienced an insider-driven data loss in the past 18 months.
- 62% of incidents were caused by negligent/compromised users. Just 16% involved confirmed malicious intent.
In short, insider threats are one of the biggest risks in cybersecurity. Much of this is rooted into weak policies, no user training, and end users just trying to do their job with the minimum amount of friction.
So how do we solve the problem?
The solution is all about the technology and policies your IT team is using to keep your organization safe. Here are just two examples:
- Least privilege: An effective privilege access management (PAM) system gives you complete visibility over all the identities and privileges in your organization – including human, machine, and AI accounts. This gives you the visibility you need to remove any redundant accounts and unnecessary access rights, shrinking the blast radius of an attack or mistake by as much as possible.
- Just-in-time access: Privileged elevation and delegation management (PEDM) tools let IT teams create policies to dynamically extend and revoke access rights on a case-by-case basis. This means accounts can only access information and permissions they absolutely need. Admins can revoke access fast if they detect suspicious activities.
Want to find out more? Check out Heimdal’s PAM and PEDM products today.
References:
¹ DTEX/Ponemon Institute: Cost of Insider Risks: 2026 Global Report (2026)
² Verizon: 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report (2026)
³ Fortinet/Cybersecurity Insiders: 2025 Insider Risk Report (2025)
⁴ Flashpoint: Insider Threats: Turning 2025 Intelligence into a 2026 Defense Strategy (2026)
⁵ Mimecast: The State of Human Risk (2026)
⁶ Cogility/Cybersecurity Insiders: Insider Risk Report: The Shift to Predictive Whole-Person
Insider Risk Management (2025)
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