More Than Half of Cybersecurity Professionals Pressured to Hide Breaches, Study Finds

A new industry report reveals that 55.2% of IT and security professionals who experienced a breach in the past year were told to keep it quiet — even when disclosure was legally required.

The finding comes from the 2026 Bitdefender Cybersecurity Assessment, a multi-year study surveying more than 1,200 IT and security professionals across six countries. As global disclosure regulations have expanded significantly since 2023, the pressure to conceal breaches has not only persisted — it has grown. The gap between what organizations are required to report and what they actually report represents one of the most pressing blind spots in modern cybersecurity governance.

---

The Scale of Breach Concealment Is Growing

Roughly half of the 1,200 professionals surveyed reported experiencing a breach or security incident within the past 12 months. Of that group, more than half said they were explicitly asked to stay silent about it.

The trend line tells a more troubling story. In 2023, 42% of respondents said they had been pressured to conceal a breach. That figure climbed sharply to 57.6% by 2025 before settling at 55.2% in 2026. Experts note this latest figure represents a plateau rather than a genuine reversal — and plateaus at this level should not be mistaken for progress.

Geographic Patterns Reveal a Global Problem

Geographic patterns are equally striking. A majority of IT and cybersecurity professionals in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Singapore reported being asked to keep a breach silent in the past 12 months. In France and Italy, just under 50% of respondents reported facing similar pressure. U.S.-based professionals faced the highest rate of suppression pressure among all countries surveyed.

This is not an isolated compliance failure — it reflects a systemic cultural and organizational problem that crosses borders, industries, and company sizes. Understanding the forces driving this behavior is essential before any meaningful change can occur.

---

Three Forces Driving Organizations to Stay Silent

During a recent Bitdefender webinar on Cybersecurity Benchmarks and Blind Spots, a panel of security experts identified three core reasons organizations choose concealment over compliance.

Attackers Have Monetized Silence

Threat actors are increasingly designing attacks that only a small number of people inside an organization ever detect. Rather than staging dramatic, company-wide ransomware events, some attackers now approach IT teams directly with a discreet proposition.

"What this means, if you are a victim, is that instead of shutting down the whole company and showing every single employee on the monitor that you have been hacked, the attacks are now much quieter, with attackers sometimes talking secretly to the IT team," said Martin Zugec, Bitdefender's Technical Solutions Director. Attackers offer clean recovery in exchange for payment and mutual silence — turning confidentiality itself into a revenue stream.

This tactic exploits one of the most underappreciated vulnerabilities in any organization: the fear of exposure. When silence becomes a transaction, the integrity of the entire incident response process is compromised.

The Perceived Cost of Disclosure Feels Too High

Many organizations weigh the immediate reputational and financial consequences of going public against the risk of staying quiet. "It could be concern over potential fines, reputational damage, the impact on customer retention, or similar fears," said Nicholas Jackson, Director of Cybersecurity Services at Bitdefender.

That calculus is increasingly flawed. Jackson warned that threat actors are now weaponizing non-disclosure against organizations that refuse to pay. "It's more likely now that attackers will make your data public or threaten to inform regulators about what happened if you fail to pay. If they reveal your breach and the fact you tried to hide it, that could have a longer negative impact than disclosing the breach yourself."

The organizations most likely to suffer lasting reputational damage are not those that disclosed a breach — they are those that were caught hiding one. Regulators in the EU, UK, and US have made clear that concealment significantly worsens enforcement outcomes. Understanding how to respond effectively when an incident occurs is critical; a well-structured data breach response plan that guides your organization through disclosure can reduce both the legal and reputational fallout considerably.

A Culture of Silence Compounds Every Other Risk

When organizational culture discourages employees from admitting mistakes or reporting suspicious activity, the consequences extend far beyond optics. In environments where people fear blame, even a known incident can go unreported for hours.

"In that kind of environment, people can wait hours to report they clicked on something. Meanwhile, the attacker is establishing persistence, stealing credentials, and trying to move laterally," said Josh Armstrong, Senior Manager of the Bitdefender Global SOC. That delay directly increases dwell time — the window during which an attacker operates inside a network undetected — which Armstrong described as "an extremely expensive variable in incident response."

The longer an attacker remains inside a network undetected, the more damage they can do and the more costly remediation becomes. A culture that quietly tolerates concealment is, in practice, subsidizing attackers.

---

What Security Leaders Must Do Before the Next Breach

The Bitdefender experts offered a clear prescription for organizations that want to break the cycle of concealment. Disclosure posture should be decided before an incident occurs, not during one, when pressure and panic distort judgment. Internal reporting cultures must reward speed over perfection, creating environments where employees feel safe flagging problems immediately rather than hiding them.

Preparation Is the Most Effective Defense

Building the right posture begins long before a breach happens. Organizations that have invested in a comprehensive cybersecurity incident response plan are significantly better positioned to respond quickly, disclose appropriately, and limit the window of attacker access. Preparation also removes the panic-driven decision-making that leads many organizations to choose concealment over compliance in the first place.

Perhaps most critically, the panel emphasized prevention as the ultimate strategy. The cheapest breach, as the Bitdefender team put it, is the one that never happens. Organizations looking to reduce their exposure should also examine the upstream conditions that allow breaches to occur; a rigorous approach to preventing data breaches before they happen remains the most cost-effective investment a security team can make.

The findings carry immediate implications for security leaders, compliance officers, and business executives navigating an environment where regulatory scrutiny is intensifying and threat actors are growing more sophisticated in exploiting organizational silence. For further regulatory context, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) provides updated guidance on breach notification requirements and federal reporting obligations.

How Readers Can Act on This Information

• Security and compliance teams should audit their current incident response plans to confirm disclosure timelines and obligations are clearly documented and known to all relevant stakeholders before a breach occurs.
• Business leaders can use these findings to evaluate whether their internal culture inadvertently punishes employees for reporting mistakes — a hidden cost that extends attacker dwell time and increases breach severity.
• IT professionals facing suppression pressure should familiarize themselves with applicable breach notification laws in their jurisdiction, as personal legal liability for concealing a reportable breach is a growing regulatory concern.

---

The 2026 Bitdefender Cybersecurity Assessment is based on responses from more than 1,200 IT and security professionals across six countries and covers breach disclosure, attack surface challenges, artificial intelligence's role for both attackers and defenders, and the pressures shaping key security decisions.