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Cybersecurity Statistics

Cybersecurity statistics / BEC

Business Email Compromise is identified as the initial threat in 35% of ransomware incidents.

PublisherProofpoint
Report2026 AI-Era Ransomware Report
Published22 July 2026
TopicsBEC, Ransomware, Email Security

Published by Proofpoint in 2026 AI-Era Ransomware Report, 22 July 2026. The figure is taken from the report as published; the full methodology is in the source.

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Related statistics

35.9% of IT and security professionals report experiencing business email compromise (BEC) resulting in financial or data loss in the past 12 months.
Bitdefender, 04/07/2026
54.7% of IT and security professionals in the U.S. report experiencing BEC incidents, nearly 19 percentage points above the overall average.
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33% of all business email compromise in higher education is lateral.
Abnormal AI, 27/05/2026
Routine invoice inquiries have a compromise rate of less than 1%.
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Billing account update requests have a 26.5% compromise rate.
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Vendor email compromise accounts for 61% of all business email compromise attacks.
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