Data breaches reported in the USNovo Nordisk semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy) revenue
US data breaches and Novo Nordisk's semaglutide revenue have, between 2018 and 2023, risen together at a correlation of 0.967. The implication that weight-loss drugs are somehow driving cybersecurity failures is, mercifully, unsupportable. Both are simply things that got very much bigger during the same few years. Everything got bigger. That is the story.
US data breach disclosures grew from about 1,250 in 2018 to over 3,200 by 2023, driven by industrialized credential stuffing, ransomware, and expanded breach-notification laws. Novo Nordisk's semaglutide revenue exploded from near-zero to over $25 billion in the same window as Ozempic crossed into off-label weight loss and Wegovy formalized the indication. Both trends are expressions of the same transformative late-2010s-to-2020s window: one in medical intervention, one in digital vulnerability. The shared variable is the calendar.
Six years of two lines rising together can describe two separate industries scaling in lockstep for completely unrelated reasons. The injection and the breach occupy the same decade. Neither knows the other is there.
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Want to learn more about why correlations like “Data breaches reported in the US” vs “Novo Nordisk semaglutide (Ozempic/Wegovy) revenue” don't prove causation? Read our guide to statistical thinking.
