Why Are So Many Security Professionals Keeping Breaches Quiet?

Summary: In the 2026 Bitdefender Cybersecurity Assessment, 55.2% of IT and security professionals who reported a breach in the past 12 months said they were asked to keep it confidential even when it was reportable, up from 42.0% in 2023 and down slightly from 57.6% in 2025. Roughly half of the 1,200 respondents across six countries reported a breach or incident in the last year, with a majority in the U.S., Germany, the UK, and Singapore saying they were asked to stay silent.
What you should know: Bitdefender's experts describe attackers now selling silence directly to IT teams - offering clean recovery in exchange for confidentiality - and warn that non-payment increasingly means the data goes public or regulators get tipped off. The 55.2% figure has held near its peak for two years, which suggests the pressure to conceal is structural rather than a one-off.

Read the original at The Hacker News ↗