Did you know that the zettabyte didn’t exist before 2012, when this amount of data was first reached?
The world creates an enormous amount of data, and by loading this page you have just created a little more. Nobody measures the global total consistently, though, because created, stored, copied and transmitted data are four different things, so this page starts where the evidence actually is: what it costs when data is lost, and how often it happens.
Not only that, but more and more companies are backing up their files, creating business continuity plans, organizing incident response teams, and investing a significant amount of money and time in data protection.
But why do they do that?
With this dizzying amount of data comes great responsibility. Knowing the data loss statistics can help you understand the problem and take measures to prevent it.
But before we dive deeper into the topic, we at Webtribunal have prepared our top picks to give you a sense of the gravity of the issue.
Editor’s choice: The Most Intriguing Data Loss Stats
- IBM reports a $4.99 million global average data-breach cost in 2026, up 12% on the previous report.
- Verizon’s 2026 DBIR examined more than 31,000 security incidents, including over 22,000 confirmed breaches, across 145 countries.
- Ransomware was involved in 48% of breaches in that analysis.
- Sophos reports an average ransomware recovery cost of $1,700,200 in 2026, excluding ransom payments.
- 56% of surveyed ransomware victims had data encrypted.
- Backblaze recorded a 1.73% annualized drive failure rate in Q2 2026, up from 1.24% in Q1.
Data Loss Statistics 2026
Both companies and individuals should prepare for disastrous scenarios. Sometimes failure is inevitable, so you should always expect the unexpected.
Next, we’ll show you how often hard drives fail, we’ll tell you about the most notable recent data breaches and other interesting stats.
1. Backblaze recorded a 1.73% annualized drive failure rate in Q2 2026.
(Source: Backblaze)
Backblaze publishes failure data for its own production fleet every quarter. Its Q2 2026 report, released on September 29, 2026, put the annualized failure rate at 1.73% across 354,415 drives, up from 1.24% in Q1 2026 and against 1.36% for the whole of 2025.
Two scope notes. AFR is annualized, so it is the rate at which drives would fail over a year at that quarter’s pace, not the share that died during the quarter. And this is an enterprise fleet of constantly-spinning data-center drives, so it is not a general probability of losing data on any device.
2. Verizon examined more than 22,000 confirmed breaches in its 2026 report.
(Source: Verizon DBIR)
The 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report covers more than 31,000 security incidents, of which more than 22,000 were confirmed breaches, drawn from victims in 145 countries. The underlying dataset runs from October 2024 to November 2025, and it is the largest in the report’s 19-year history.
This is the report’s sample, not a count of every breach in the world. No such global census exists. An incident is any event compromising the integrity, confidentiality or availability of information; a breach requires confirmed disclosure.
Ransomware was involved in 48% of the breaches analysed. Read that as a share of breaches in this dataset, not as a share of all data-loss causes.
3. From 2005 to the first half of 2020, the number of breaches in the US alone was 1,632.
(Source: Statista)
The year 2017 holds the record for data security breaches with 1,632 cases, while the number of exposed records peaked in 2018, reaching 471.23 million.
In 2016, Yahoo revealed the biggest case of compromised data at the time. They declared that the amount of stolen information can be linked to at least 1 billion accounts. As it turned out later, the affected accounts were actually around 3 billion.
Looking at data breach statistics by year can be fun and we can even learn a few lessons from the past.
But what about today?
When did the latest incident of this kind happen?
4. In 2020, the Dutch government lost the data of 6.9 million registered organ donors.
(Source: ZDNet, Bleeping Computer, TimesLIVE)
One of the latest data breaches occurred at the beginning of 2020 due to human error causing the loss of two external hard disks. They contained the personal information of nearly 7 million registered organ donors.
Another case of compromised data identified later that year was a cybersecurity breach in GoDaddy—the largest domain and web hosting company in the world. The incident happened in October 2019 and afflicted around 28,000 customers.
One more recent data breach made it to our list. The Postbank from South Africa had to change almost 12 million bank cards after employees stole classified information.
Quite frightening, right? Are you thinking about changing your passwords?
We can only hope that a security breach in 2022 will be a more rare phenomenon.
Average Cost of Data Recovery
A major challenge with breaches is not only containing them but detecting they happened in the first place.
The harsh truth is that every second of downtime costs. A lot. The expenses are enormous, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. According to data breach statistics, some companies might even never reopen after losing their information.
The following stats will reveal the actual cost of data loss.
5. Companies need 206 days on average to detect a data breach.
(Source: IBM)
With approximately 206 days to realize the incident has happened and 73 days more to fix the problem, such issues can last around 279 days. Data breach statistics show us that every day matters—companies that identify and contain the problem within the first 200 days spend $1.2 million less than the average cost in similar situations.
Those numbers are especially large for small and medium-sized companies. Let’s take a closer look:
6. The global average data-breach cost reached $4.99 million in 2026.
(Source: IBM)
IBM’s 2026 Cost of a Data Breach report puts the global average at $4.99 million, up 12% on the previous report and a record for the series.
This is the cost of a data breach specifically, not of every kind of data-loss event. A failed drive with a good backup costs very little; a breach brings notification, regulatory, legal and remediation costs that a hardware failure does not. Our backup statistics cover how often recovery actually succeeds, and our cybersecurity statistics cover the threat side.
Data Breach Trends
Better safe than sorry!
In the following chapter, you’ll find some of the most recent data breaches, as well as some prevention methods. After all, this is why we created this list of data loss statistics—to keep you safe and up-to-date with the latest trends.
7. Ransomware recovery costs averaged $1.7 million in 2026.
(Source: Sophos)
Sophos’ 2026 State of Ransomware report, based on 2,158 IT and cybersecurity leaders across 17 countries, puts the average recovery cost at $1,700,200, up 11% year over year. That figure excludes any ransom paid.
It is a different measure from IBM’s $4.99 million above, with a different population and a different event, so the two should not be averaged or compared as though they describe the same thing.
In the same research, 56% of surveyed ransomware victims had data encrypted. The denominator there is ransomware victims in the survey, not organizations generally.
8. 91% of organizations back up their databases.
(Source: Statista)
Backup statistics show that organizations might have different priorities, but what most of them have in common is that they secure their files regularly.
This is the first line of defense and the fundamental way for preventing data loss. To be safe, you have to store a copy offsite and encrypt sensitive information.
Besides databases, 68% of organizations protect their email, while only 16% back up SaaS data.
Wrap Up
Now that we’re at the very end let’s go over the key points again. We started with general data loss examples, which showed you the importance of reliable backups. We ended with the chances of being a victim of a breach and the newest cybercriminal attacks you should be on the lookout for.
Who’d have guessed that there’s so much data about data?
What we can learn from all these data loss statistics is that the amount of information will snowball over the years and that cybersecurity is critical for preserving a business. Staying informed is the first step toward being prepared and protected. And data loss prevention is an investment in the future.
