Breaches are common and costly — over a quarter of organizations have been hit via unpatched vulnerabilities, and prevention is far cheaper than remediation.

Surveys have found that over 27% of organizations globally (and ~34% in Europe) reported a breach tied to an unpatched vulnerability.

Why this matters:

1. Vulnerabilities are actively exploited — Attackers specifically target known flaws
2. Patching alone isn't enough — Many breaches happen before patches are applied, or because custom code has unique vulnerabilities no patch will fix
3. Prevention is cheaper than remediation — Cost of a breach (data loss, reputation, fines) far exceeds cost of secure development

Secure programming reduces vulnerabilities at the source, making systems resilient even when patches are delayed.

"System Intrusion" — sophisticated, often multi-step technical attacks — has overtaken social engineering and basic web attacks; the overwhelming majority are external actors after money.

Verizon's annual Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) tracks the patterns behind real breaches over time. By 2023 the pattern called System Intrusion — complex, technical, frequently multi-stage attacks (think malware, exploited vulnerabilities, hacking chains) — had climbed to the top, overtaking Social Engineering and Basic Web Application Attacks, which had dominated in earlier years.

The actor and motive breakdown for system intrusions is strikingly lopsided:

Why this matters for a developer: the attackers hitting your software are overwhelmingly outsiders chasing money, and the leading breach pattern is technical intrusion — exactly the class of attack that hardened, well-written code makes harder and more expensive. This is the data-driven answer to "why bother writing secure code?"