AI is accelerating data theft at Mexican companies

Data theft targeting companies in Mexico surged in 2026, and the experts El Financiero spoke with point to one common factor: AI is making attacks faster and cheaper.

The numbers:

• The firm IQSEC documented 116 victims and 101 leaks over seven weeks of monitoring in the first half of the year, across 26 states and 11 economic sectors.
• Grupo Xcaret reported that a flaw allowed data on some 8,300 customers to be extracted; Aeroméxico acknowledged that user data had been stolen. Banks, department stores, and supermarkets have also been hit.
• Kaspersky reported groups that compromise administrative accounts and steal data from educational institutions in Latin America in less than an hour.
• Mexico's Secretaría Anticorrupción y Buen Gobierno is investigating the alleged sale of 12.9 million records attributed to contact centers.

The stolen data is mostly contact information, and it's used for impersonation and fraud.

Why it matters for builders

If you build with customer data, your attack surface grows with every integration and every agent you grant permissions to. The experts' message is that many companies still see cybersecurity as a cost; for a startup, an early leak can cost it the trust of its first big customer.