Canada one of the top places in the world for data breaches caused by AI, says report

New data has shown that Canada is one of the top global spots for money lost by data breaches.

A recent report by IBM has revealed that, on an international scale, Canada ranks fourth in terms of capital lost due to breached data.

According to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report, in 2025, the average cost of data breaches in Canada was nearly $7 million, a 10 per cent increase compared to 2024.

In the Canadian financial sector, cumulative breaches within the industry averaged nearly $10 million in costs over the last year.

The global average of funds lost due to stolen or leaked data is roughly $4 million.

As for what is behind current trends in compromised data, according to IBM, the continued unchecked progression and adaptation of modern AI programs, specifically in this case, ‘Shadow AI’, is becoming a fast-growing issue.

Details in the report showed that numerous unmonitored forms of AI leave internal systems vulnerable to exploitation, further hindered by the fact that 63 per cent of Canadian organizations don’t have any sort of AI regulation policy.

According to IBM, the average breach caused by Shadow AI costs $308,000 per incident.

Further details on the nature of how data gets accessed, according to IBM, are as follows:

• 51 per cent of breaches are targeted attacks
• 26 per cent is human error
• 23 per cent is an IT failure

Out of the pool of attacks that use AI to their advantage, IBM noted that 37 per cent of these infiltrations use AI-generated phishing procedures, while 35 per cent use generated deepfakes to access information.

As a result of this fast-moving and high-risk technology, IBM closed out its report by citing a greater urgency for AI security technologies internationally.