Data breaches made headlines in 2025 in health care, manufacturing, technology, retail and financial services but AI can play a role in preventing them. 

In 2025, data breach costs in financial services reached $5.56 million, according to DeepStrike’s recent “Data breach statistics 2025: Costs, causes, trends and insights” report. The report also offered these causes behind breaches: 

• Stolen credentials; 

• Phishing; 

• Exploitation; 

• Supply chain compromise; 

• Ransomware; and 

• Shadow AI. 

In October, credit check and identity verification provider for auto dealerships 700Credit experienced a breach resulting in the theft of personal information of at least 5.6 million people, according to the State of Wisconsin’s Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.  

“In this case, a customer of 700Credit had access to the data and they were hacked, and the attacker used that company’s access to pull all the data,” Mike Puglia, general manager of security products at software provider Kaseya, told FinAi News. 

This breach is an example of “where AI can really shine,” Puglia said.  

“Looking at massive amounts of usage data and detecting abnormal behavior – the patterns of an attacker downloading millions of records would certainly not be normal usage for that third party and AI does a really good job at identifying deviations from ‘normal’ behavior,” he said. 

Noteworthy breaches

These breaches continue to happen.  

In December, fintech Marquis confirmed it experienced a ransomware attack in August resulting in hackers accessing personal and financial data. 

One affected client is Security Credit Union. The Grand Blanc, Mich.-based credit union posted on its site: “While this incident did not involve the credit union’s computer systems, we take seriously the security of our members’ information, and we are evaluating Marquis’ response to this incident and our going forward relationship with it.” 

Some 16 billion login credentials for Apple, Google, Telegram and Meta were exposed earlier this year in one of the largest data breaches in history, Cybernews reported June 18. 

Even with security and AI in place, it’s important to react appropriately if a breach does occur, Puglia said.  

“Consumers should never respond directly to unsolicited correspondence and must independently verify all requests by contacting organizations directly through official channels before taking action,” he said. 

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