Top 5 ways hackers breach companies in 2026, according to Verizon

Hackers are increasingly exploiting familiar weaknesses, from stolen credentials and unpatched systems to ransomware and social engineering, as cyberattacks become more effective and harder to detect.

Verizon’s 2026 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), which analysed more than 31,000 security incidents, including over 22,000 confirmed breaches across 145 countries, shows that one attack pattern accounted for 61% of confirmed breaches.

System Intrusion remained the dominant breach pattern, while social engineering and web application attacks also accounted for significant shares.

The report also highlights a less obvious threat: ordinary employee mistakes, which can expose sensitive data without a hacker ever breaking into a system.

Here are the five leading breach patterns identified by Verizon.

5. Privilege Misuse: 3% of breaches

This is the smallest of the five major patterns, but not one to ignore. It refers to where insiders deliberately abuse legitimate access for unauthorized purposes.

A common example is when an employee wants to work from home and emails company data to a personal account.

However, according to Verizon, privilege misuse has never been a dominant driver of data breaches. This is because organizations generally face far more risk from external actors than from their own employees.

When it comes to who is behind these breaches, in most cases (54%) it is an average End user. Developers account for another 22%, with System admins and Managers each at 8%, and Executives at around 3%.

Developers and System admins carry outsized weight here relative to their smaller numbers, since both roles tend to have higher levels of privileged access, raising the potential impact when misuse does occur.

Convenience, not malice, is the leading motive, present in 60% of these breaches. Financial…