Ransomware and business email compromise were the two leading causes of loss.
Key takeaways
Ninety-seven percent of claims in the study come from small to medium enterprises.
The financial services industry had the higher average incident cost, followed by healthcare.
Understanding the ongoing cybersecurity threats to the middle market
As cybersecurity threats and data security events continue to increase, understanding the costs and resources necessary to respond to a data breach is essential. RSM is a proud sponsor of the sixteenth annual NetDiligence® Cyber Claims Study, a report detailing the actual losses from data breaches and other cyber-related incidents covered by leading cybersecurity insurance carriers.
This year’s report features an analysis of over 10,300 cyber claims arising from events that occurred between 2021 and 2025. Ransomware and business email compromise (BEC) continue to be the two leading causes of loss in the NetDiligence survey, accounting for 51% of losses greater than or equal to $1,000 between 2021 and 2025 and nearly 61% in 2025. The financial services industry had the highest average incident cost in the survey ($519,000), followed closely by healthcare ($516,000), with manufacturing ($383,000) ranking third.
Almost all the claims in the survey (97%) were from small to medium enterprises with less than $2 billion in annual revenue. While large companies represented only 3% of claims, they accounted for 56% of the total incident costs in the report.
Recovery cost is where technical debt shows up on the claim file. Modern, well-documented, cloud-native environments come back quickly. Aging systems, undocumented applications and one-of-a-kind equipment don’t—and every additional day of rebuild compounds the interruption loss sitting underneath it.
Scott German, Principal, RSM US LLP
Bonus content inside the report:
Emerging cloud and AI risks: Why governance matters more than ever
Organizations are embracing artificial intelligence and cloud technologies to increase efficiency. RSM details how risk increases when adoption outpaces governance and how leaders can react by:
- Starting cloud and AI projects with business processes, not tools
- Reinforcing identity and process verification
- Assessing cloud configuration and controls
- Governing API keys, AI accounts and cloud identities
- Creating or refreshing AI usage policies
- Using AI defensively to detect and contain issues faster
The organizations that recognize the changing risk landscape and build governance, controls and accountability into technology strategies will be better positioned to benefit from innovation while limiting potential consequences.
Download the report
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