HUMAN behavior is a growing and persistent source of cyber incidents, and experts expect insider threats to rise even further.
According to new research from human risk management leader Mimecast, organizations across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region are experiencing insider-driven cyber incidents more frequently than their counterparts in North America and Europe.
While the average cost per insider-driven incident is broadly consistent across regions at around $13.1 million, the higher frequency of incidents in APAC significantly amplifies the cumulative financial, operational and reputational impact. In APAC, the research suggests that the sheer frequency of such incidents is becoming a defining risk factor for organizations operating at scale.
Insider-driven incidents, which can stem from compromised credentials, negligent actions or inadvertent mistakes by employees, are increasingly being recognized as regular features of the cyber threat landscape rather than isolated or exceptional events.
The study also found that 64 percent of APAC respondents expect insider-driven data loss to increase at their organization over the next 12 months, indicating growing concern that existing controls may struggle to keep pace with the complexity of modern working environments.
More than half of APAC organizations (53 percent) are already using AI-driven behavioral or sentiment analysis to identify potential insider threats, reflecting growing efforts to detect suspicious activity linked to human behavior.
According to the research, APAC organizations are operating within increasingly complex digital environments characterized by large, distributed workforces and high volumes of day-to-day communication and data exchange. As organizations grow and adopt new ways of working, insider risk is shaped less by single points of failure and more by the interaction between people, processes and visibility across digital systems.
The findings indicate that while organizations globally face similar per-incident costs when insider-driven incidents occur, APAC’s elevated incident frequency places additional pressure on security teams, incident response processes and governance structures. Over time, this can translate into greater exposure to regulatory scrutiny, prolonged operational disruption and erosion of stakeholder confidence.
The report recommends five mutually reinforcing priorities: securing all communication channels with unified protection; managing human risk through behavioral analytics and user-centric controls; governing data with automated compliance; consolidating security tools into integrated platforms; and preparing for AI-driven threats with both defensive AI and clear governance frameworks.
These should not be treated as five separate projects. They are interconnected — unified channel protection feeds richer data to behavioral analytics, better risk scoring informs governance policies, and integrated platforms make the whole system operationally feasible.
The bottom line: The cost of inaction far exceeds the investment required. With nearly $1 billion in estimated annual insider risk exposure, collaboration tool attacks on the rise, and AI supercharging the threat landscape, 2026 is the year organizations must move from awareness to execution.
The question for every security leader is not whether to invest in human risk management. It is whether to act before the next incident — or after.
Mimecast’s State of Human Risk 2026 study is based on responses from IT and security decision-makers across APAC, North America, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and examines how human behavior, insider activity and organizational practices are influencing today’s cyber risk landscape.