Key Takeaways
- Employee PII costs $168 per record in 2025, down from $189 in 2024.
- Intellectual property became the most expensive breach type at $178 per record, rising from $173.
- Anonymized customer data causes the least damage – just $115 per record in 2025.
- A breach of 10,000 customer records at $160 each totals $1.6 million in costs.
The Story Behind the Numbers
IBM data shows that the cost of a data breach depends heavily on the type of information exposed. Records tied directly to people remain the most expensive. In 2024, employee Personally Identifiable Information (PII) averaged $189 per record, followed by customer PII at $179. In 2025, both categories became cheaper, dropping to $168 and $160 respectively, alongside a decline in other corporate data to $154 per record.
Not every category followed this trend. Intellectual property became more costly in 2025, rising from $173 to $178 per record, making it the most expensive data type that year. By contrast, anonymized customer data caused the least financial damage, falling from $132 in 2024 to $115 in 2025, reinforcing how removing direct identifiers lowers breach impact.
Why This Data is Important
Per-record costs may look small, but breaches rarely involve just one file. A leak of 10,000 customer PII records at $160 each quickly adds up to $1.6 million. This explains why companies focus so heavily on data handling and access controls. And for smaller companies, the baseline is still brutal: breaches at organizations under 500 employees average about $3.31 million in total costs.
For everyday users, this data highlights why personal details are so valuable online. Names, emails, and account logins are expensive because they can be reused across services. Tools that reduce exposure – such as learning how to hide your IP address or understanding what a VPN actually does – help limit how much identifiable data is shared in the first place. Even casual activities like streaming or gaming involve accounts that store PII, which is why secure connections matter beyond just privacy enthusiasts.
Looking Ahead: Future Outlook
The 2025 decline across most categories suggests companies are getting better at limiting breach fallout, especially for customer and employee PII. However, the rise in intellectual property costs shows that strategic data remains a major risk. As more services move online, reducing identifiable data exposure – through better design and user-side tools like fast, secure VPNs – will likely remain a priority.
Source & Methodology
All figures come from IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report, which estimates the average cost per compromised record by data type. Values shown compare 2024 and 2025 averages.