The 2026 Privacy Trends Report
The 2026 Privacy Trends Report analyzes data from over 1,400 healthcare sites, 43 privacy and compliance professionals, and federal breach records to reveal what’s driving up costs and what leading organizations are doing differently. From the 279-day average breach detection timeline to the Shadow AI blind spots putting PHI at risk, this report gives compliance teams the data they need to act.
Individuals Affected By Healthcare Data Breaches
In 2025, approximately 710 large healthcare data breaches were reported to HHS OCR, affecting at least 61.6 million individuals.
Average Days To Contain a Healthcare Breach
In 2025, US healthcare breaches took an average of 279 days to identify and contain, which is five weeks longer than the global average.
Healthcare Organizations Using Third-Party AI Tools
AI governance committees are forming, and some compliance leaders have opted out of AI adoption entirely, citing data privacy concerns, accuracy limitations, and organizational policy.
Healthcare breach costs remain the highest of any industry for the 12th consecutive year.
At $7.42M per incident, healthcare runs 67% above the global average — and the three largest cost drivers hit every organization regardless of size.
The breach threat is closer than most organizations think.
The threat isn’t always malicious. Family member access, self-access, and coworker snooping collectively represent the majority of reviewed cases — violations that often go undetected for months because manual auditing can’t keep pace. The average hospital generates 60 million auditable events every month and reviews roughly 1,000 of them.
The true scale of healthcare breaches is larger than federal data suggests.
HHS OCR’s 500-record threshold for public disclosure means the official breach numbers consistently undercount the real impact. What gets reported is only part of the story — and in 2025, the gap between reported and actual exposure was stark.