01 · Industry research · 2025 edition
IBM/Ponemon Cost of a Data Breach, 2025
IBM Security, research by Ponemon Institute
Cited for the cost and frequency breakdown, per vector: Figures 7, 9, 13–14, and 39. These sit beside each decision on the home page. They serve as an industry reference. It is also cited for one decision's malicious-insider cost figure, in that decision's own cost line.
This is the earlier of the two Cost of a Data Breach editions cited on this site. See “How to read this page” above to see which figures come from which edition.
Access — free to read; registration required.
02 · Industry research · 2026 edition
IBM/Ponemon Cost of a Data Breach, 2026
IBM Security, research by Ponemon Institute
Cited for the cost figures. These are global and U.S. averages, and days to identify and contain. Also cited for cost figures by vector. These are phishing and supply chain. They are also public-facing exploits and help-desk impersonation. And they are business-partner compromise. These figures are used across three of the ten decisions' cost lines.
Access — free to read; registration required.
03 · Industry research · 2026 edition
Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), 2026
Verizon Business
Cited for third-party involvement in breaches (48%). Also cited for exploited vulnerabilities. This is the leading initial access vector (31%). And cited for KEV remediation outcomes. About one in four are fully fixed. The median time is 43 days (report pp. 10, 17). Used in two decisions.
Access — access terms as published.
04 · Industry research · 2026 edition
Mandiant M-Trends, 2026
Mandiant (Google Cloud)
Cited for intrusion dwell time. It is also cited for detection method figures. These are the median time to detection. They also show how intrusions were found: by an outside notice, or by the company itself. And it is cited for cloud intrusion initial access. This shows how common each vector is (vishing, exploitation). Used across three decisions.
Access — access terms as published.
05 · Industry research · 2026 edition
CrowdStrike Global Threat Report, 2026
CrowdStrike
Cited for the share of intrusions with no malware. It is also cited for the share of cloud incidents from valid account abuse, and for attacker lateral movement timing. It is also cited for the count of organizations. Their own AI assistants were talked into actions they were not allowed to take. Used across four decisions.
Access — access terms as published.
06 · Industry research · H1 2026 edition
Identity Theft Resource Center, H1 2026 Data Breach Report
Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC)
Cited for the share of notices that disclosed how the attack happened. Also cited for a single incident concentration figure. This is for one notice category. Used across two decisions.
Access — access terms as published.
07 · Industry research · 2026 edition
Sophos, The State of Ransomware, 2026
Sophos
Cited for ransomware recovery cost. Also cited for ransom payment rate, and median ransom demand. Also cited for the added recovery cost. That cost applies when backups are also compromised. Used across two decisions.
Access — access terms as published.
08 · U.S. government work
CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Cited for the “actively exploited” list of flaws. Also cited for its fix due date rule. That rule is Binding Operational Directive 22-01. It is cited in one decision, in its mechanism text and its cost line.
Access — U.S. government work, public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).
09 · U.S. government work · FY2023, latest published
OMB FISMA Fiscal Year 2023 Annual Report to Congress
Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
Cited for the breakdown of incident categories. These are counted across the federal government. Improper usage was the leading category. Used in one decision. FY2023 was the latest edition published as of this citation. It is the oldest dated source in this list.
Access — U.S. government work, public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).
10 · U.S. government work · May 2024 (edition pinned at engagement scoping)
BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics — Information Security Analysts
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)
Cited for the median hourly wage for information security analysts. It is scaled by 1.33. That gives the $80/hour loaded rate the cards use. This is the rate underlying every one of the ten decisions' fix-cost estimate.
Access — U.S. government work, public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).
11 · Vendor threat-intelligence reporting
Google Threat Intelligence / Mandiant vendor-compromise reporting
Google Threat Intelligence / Mandiant (Google Cloud)
Cited for a report on a vendor credential compromise. Press coverage from the same time is cited beside it. Used in one decision. This entry names no article title and no URL for that one incident. That follows this page's own de-identification rule. See Licensing & Attribution below.
Access — access terms as published.
12 · U.S. government program documents
FedRAMP program documents — Consolidated Rules 2026 (CR26) and RFC-0031
FedRAMP Program Management Office, U.S. General Services Administration
Cited for the clocks that govern two of the ten decisions. One is the PAIN remediation clock. The other treats a detection gap as a vulnerability with its own clock. That second clock's program id is VDR-CSO-FAV.
Access — U.S. government work, public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).
13 · U.S. government work · Control authority
NIST SP 800-53 Revision 5 + SP 800-53A
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
No number comes from these documents directly. They set the control text and the test steps. They stand behind every one of the ten decisions' anchor controls and the FedRAMP High baseline itself. This entry is constant across all ten, so it is listed once here. It is not repeated on the index rows below.
Access — U.S. government work, public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).
14 · Consultancy & tool-vendor estimates
Moderate re-authorization cost and timeline estimates
Secureframe, Vanta, Paramify, Knox Systems, CISGuard
Cited for a range used for a late or lost Moderate re-authorization. That range is $250,000 to $2 million, and 12 to 24 months. This is referenced in two decisions. FedRAMP publishes no official figure for this. These are estimates from consultancies and tool vendors. They sit at the publication level, directional only.
Access — publicly published estimates, access terms as published.
15 · Industry research · 2026 edition
Coalition Cyber Claims Report, 2026
Coalition, Inc. (via Risk & Insurance coverage)
Cited for the anchor behind the modeled ROI band on every one of the ten decisions: the average claim severity. This is the loss per event. It is for policyholders under $25 million in revenue. It also gives the ransomware claim average. Three decisions use that one. They are the destructive class. See “How the dollar bands are modeled” above.
Access — accessed via secondary trade-press coverage (Risk & Insurance); Coalition's own report was not directly fetched this pass.
16 · Industry research · 2026 edition
Hiscox Cyber Readiness Report, 2026
Hiscox
Cited for the share of small businesses attacked in the past twelve months (56%). This sets the loss-event-frequency base rate for the modeled ROI band on every one of the ten decisions. See “How the dollar bands are modeled” above.
Access — free to read (PDF).
17 · Industry research · 2024 fielding
Sophos, The Impact of Compromised Backups on Ransomware Outcomes, 2024
Sophos, fielded by Vanson Bourne (2,974 organizations hit by ransomware) — a distinct study from the 2026 State of Ransomware report cited separately above
Cited for the recovery-cost size effect of compromised vs. intact backups: eight times higher, $3M vs. $375K. This applies to one decision's modeled ROI band. See “How the dollar bands are modeled” above.
Access — free to read (vendor blog).
18 · Vendor list prices · fetched 2026-09-04
Vendor list-price pages, fetched and hashed on 2026-09-04
Multiple named-brand identity, secrets-management, SIEM, breach-and-attack-simulation, continuous-monitoring, and penetration-testing tool vendors
Cited for the cost of the stronger control in each decision's modeled ROI band. The list covers hardware security keys. It also covers identity licensing. And it covers lifecycle management licensing. It covers secrets managers and SIEM tools. It covers attack simulation. It also covers continuous monitoring platforms. It covers object-lock backup storage. It also covers penetration tests. Each is priced from the vendor's own list price. Or it is priced by marketplace listing, or by product documentation. See “How the dollar bands are modeled” above. This is held as one collective entry, not one entry per vendor. That way, a story's cost line stays about the control. It does not stay about the product behind it.
Access — eleven pages fetched directly and hashed, 2026-09-04; publicly published, no registration required.
19 · Mapping data · commit 5998957f
ATT&CK 16.1 to NIST SP 800-53 Revision 5 mapping (enterprise), CTID Mappings Explorer
Center for Threat-Informed Defense (CTID)
Cited for the control-to-technique mitigates mapping. This mapping is behind the risk-tier color on each control icon on the home page. It holds 2,782 mitigates-type mapping rows across the 31 scored controls. These collapse to 1,055 rows after de-duplication. The full 443-control crosswalk table holds 5,264 mitigates-type rows. A GSA .govCAR strength-score dataset shares that same table, but is not used here. See “How the control risk tier is colored” above.
Access — license: see the project's repository.
20 · Industry research · Red Report 2026
Picus Red Report 2026
Picus Security (Picus Labs) — 1,084,718 malware samples analyzed in 2025; 13,321,128 total TTP observations mapped to ATT&CK
Cited for ATT&CK technique-prevalence percentages. These are attributed inputs to the risk-tier color on each control icon on the home page. They are matched against the mapping above, never reproduced as a table. See “How the control risk tier is colored” above.
Access — access terms as published; the ten prevalence figures used here were retrieved 2026-09-04 by an automated text fetch of the publisher's page (self-dated 2026-02-24), not a byte-level capture, so the sha256 on file covers the extracted figures only, not the page's raw bytes.