Shadow Data Drives 35% of Enterprise Breaches

Data security remains one of the least mature areas in enterprise cybersecurity, with IBM reporting that 35% of breaches in 2025 involved unmanaged or shadow data. Many organizations still lack answers to basic questions about what data they have, where it lives, and who is responsible for it. Closing this maturity gap requires a cultural shift where security is embedded throughout the full data lifecycle rather than treated as an afterthought. This means building robust data inventories, clear classification systems, and automated guardrails that translate policy into scalable protection.