93% of Philippine firms were hacked last year. AI is making it worse.
Fortinet surveyed 60 Philippine IT and security leaders. More than half said one breach cost their company over a million dollars, and 7 in 10 needed at least a month to recover.
Almost every Philippine company in a new survey got hacked at least once in the past year. Fortinet, a cybersecurity firm, asked 60 Philippine IT and security decision makers for its 2026 Global Cybersecurity Skills Gap Report. Ninety-three percent said their organization suffered at least one breach in the last 12 months. Twenty-eight percent were hit five times or more.
The damage is expensive and slow to undo. Fifty-two percent said a single breach cost their company more than one million dollars. Seventy percent said it took at least a month to get back to normal, and in 2025 the average recovery stretched to three months.
The attacks themselves are the familiar ones: malware, or harmful software; phishing, or fake messages that steal your login; and ransomware, which locks your files until you pay. What changed is the speed. Fifty-seven percent of the Philippine respondents named AI-powered attacks as the single biggest thing driving their risk, ahead of scattered security tools, alert overload and staff shortages. Bambi Escalante, Fortinet's country manager for the Philippines, put it this way:
AI is fundamentally changing how organizations defend against cyber threats, but it is also changing the skills security teams need to succeed.
Why it matters
The companies answering this survey are the ones holding customer records, payroll files and payment details. When they get breached, the data that leaks is yours. And the report says the gap is people, not software. Seventy-one percent of the IT leaders blamed the shortage of skilled security staff for successful breaches, the third year running that this answer came first. Seventy-three percent said their hardest hire is someone who actually knows AI security. If you are studying IT here, that is a job market with a name on it.
The catch to watch
This is a vendor survey. Fortinet sells security products and training certificates, and the report's conclusion, that companies should buy more tools and certify more staff, is also its sales pitch. The Philippine sample is small at 60 people, so treat the direction as real and the exact percentages as rough. Ninety-eight percent said they will likely spend on AI security training in the next 12 months, which is the line a training seller most wants to print.