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AI is boosting familiar cyber attacks, insurer data shows

Resilience said no incurred losses in the first six months of 2026 were linked to AI specific methods, while ransomware remained the biggest driver of loss at 73% of incurred losses.

Reported · Written up by our desk · Reinsurance

Resilience, a cyber risk solutions company, released analysis in its 2026 Midyear Cyber Risk Report suggesting that artificial intelligence is being used mainly to strengthen established cyber attack techniques rather than to create new, widely autonomous AI driven categories of insured losses. The assessment is based on insurance claims data from Resilience’s portfolio and intelligence gathered by the firm’s Risk Operations Center.

According to the company, it recorded no incurred losses tied to AI specific attack methods such as prompt injection, model exploitation, or agentic AI misuse during the first half of 2026. Instead, Resilience said traditional cyber risks remained the largest source of financial losses.

Resilience reported that 85.3% of incurred losses across its portfolio were associated with incidents involving human error, with phishing, social engineering, or transfer fraud identified as the initial point of compromise. It also said that this mix has changed versus the first half of 2024, when those attacks accounted for 17.7% of incurred losses.

The report found ransomware related extortion remained the largest contributor to financial losses, representing 73% of incurred losses, even though ransomware made up 5.8% of all claims. Resilience also noted immutable backup usage rose to 85.2% from 79.9% year on year, and that vendor related incidents fell to 2.3% of incurred losses from 33.5% in the first half of 2025.

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