What do incident volumes tell a buyer?

The 2026 Verizon DBIR executive summary reports ransomware in 48% of breaches in its dataset and third-party involvement in 48%. These categories can overlap. They are not a statement that 48% of all US companies will suffer either event.

Buyer interpretation — inference: include both recovery and supplier-dependency scenarios in the evaluation. Do not use report frequencies as the buyer's annual loss probability or multiply them by revenue to manufacture a risk estimate.

Complaint reports, such as the FBI's 2025 IC3 report, offer a different view of reported internet crime. Consumer and business complaints, reported losses and a security-products market are different populations. This brief does not convert complaint totals into cybersecurity spending or a revenue opportunity.