Ransomware is getting more sophisticated to combat.
Every email attachment might contain a malicious payload that an employee or C-level executive might accidentally open, providing threat actors with a foothold to decrypt files and hold them for exorbitant ransom fees, often turning recovery into a gamble where organizations may only receive partial data, or none at all.
Ransomware deployment has become even more accessible these days.
Threat actors have expanded their illegal operations to include Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS), which provides cybercriminal “affiliates” with pre-built ransomware kits, payment infrastructure, and profit-sharing models to extort organizations with minimal effort.
That’s not factoring in AI and other advanced social engineering tactics, which can mimic writing semantics and scale attacks faster than defenders can respond.
Check Point Research found the number of active extortion groups in Q3 2025 rose to a record of 85 groups, the highest number observed to date.
Does that mean you should be concerned, as an MSP?
We’ve put together a step-by-step guide you can take in the event of a ransomware attack, but here are 31 sobering ransomware statistics from 2025 that you cannot afford to ignore moving forward in 2026 and beyond.
Ransomware Statistics 2025: What MSPs Need to Know
- Only 14% of SMBs are prepared to face an attack. Spin.AI
- 41% of IT and cybersecurity teams say they have increased anxiety or stress about future attacks. The State of Ransomware 2025
- 75% of SMBs could not continue operating if hit with ransomware. Spin.AI
- 78% of organizations were hit by ransomware in the past year. CrowdStrike State of Ransomware Survey
- 88% of SMBs experienced ransomware-driven breaches. 2025 Verizon DBIR
- SMBs ($4M-$8M) were the most frequently targeted for ransomware attacks. Black Kite 2025 Ransomware Report
- 20% of organizations reported low confidence in their ransomware preparedness post-attack. Veeam 2025 Ransomware Trends & Proactive Strategies
- Nearly 50% of organizations fear that they can’t detect or respond as fast as AI-driven attacks can execute. CrowdStrike State of Ransomware Survey
- 7 out of 10 organizations experienced an attack in the past year, and of those attacked, only 10% recovered more than 90% of their data. Help Net Security
- Only 22% of ransomware victims who felt “very well prepared” beforehand had recovered within 24 hours. CrowdStrike State of Ransomware Survey
- Qilin was the most active ransomware group in Q3 2025, with an average of 75 victims per month. Check Point’s The State of Ransomware Q3 2025
- 85% of all ransomware attacks go unreported. BlackFog’s 2025 Q3 Ransomware Report
Notable Ransomware-Related Breaches of 2025
- Ingram Micro was hit with a massive ransomware attack in 2025, resulting in 3.5 TB of stolen sensitive data and projected losses of up to $136 million per day. The Register
- The Medusa ransomware group was responsible for the theft of 834 GB of data from Comcast, with a $1.2M ransom demand. HackRead
- In April 2025, UK retail giant Marks & Spencer (M&S) was hit by a major DragonForce ransomware attack, linked to the Scattered Spider group, which was believed to have cost over £300M in lost profits and £3.8M in daily sales losses. Technology Magazine
- The Madusa ransomware group stole over 1TB of data from NASCAR with a $4M ransom demand. Comparitech
Most Common Ransomware Attack Vectors
- 71% of organizations that had experienced an email breach were also hit with ransomware. The Ransomware Insights Report 2025
- Phishing accounted for 52% of all attacks targeting MSPs in 2025 as compared to 30% in 2024. Help Net Security
- 19% of ransomware incidents in 2025 had a malicious email as the root cause. Statista
- 23% of ransomware incidents were the result of compromised credentials. Statista
- 26% of ransomware incidents in 2025 involved compromised endpoints. Hornetsecurity Ransomware Impact Report 2025
- 77% of security professionals view AI-driven phishing as a serious and emerging threat. Hornetsecurity Ransomware Impact Report 2025
- 83% of ransomware attacks compromised the identity infrastructure. Semperis Ransomware Risk Report
- 15% of ransomware victims who paid the ransom did not receive decryption keys. Semperis Ransomware Risk Report
The True Cost of Ransomware
- Ransomware is projected to cost victims over $275 billion by 2031. Cybersecurity Ventures
- 83% of paying victims were attacked again, and 93% lost data regardless of payment. CrowdStrike State of Ransomware Survey
- The average ransomware payment was $1M, and the average recovery cost was $1.5M. The State of Ransomware 2025
- Only 29% of ransomware victims said their payment matched the initial demand. The State of Ransomware 2025
- Most organizations take about 21 days to recover from a ransomware attack. Spin.AI
- A single hour of downtime costs approximately $300,000 for most enterprises. Spin.AI
- The average cost of an extortion or ransomware incident reached $5.08M when disclosed by an attacker. IBM
Check out our other cybersecurity threat-related statistics blogs and key findings here:
Small Business Cyberattacks Rise in 2025: Guardz Mid-Year Findings
33 Phishing Statistics in 2025 Every MSP Should Know About
36 Endpoint Security Statistics MSPs Should Know About in 2025
Prevent Ransomware Attacks with Guardz
Take a proactive security approach to ransomware prevention with Guardz. The Guardz unified cybersecurity platform provides MSPs with LLM-enhanced threat detection to uncover suspicious patterns in emails, where a single malicious attachment can deliver a ransomware payload and initiate a full-scale attack.
Guardz integrates with Check Point’s Harmony Email Security (formerly Avanan) to safeguard your inbox from phishing attempts and BEC attacks, so you can confidently demonstrate results and measurable outcomes to clients while preventing ransomware. A winning strategy. Schedule a demo today to learn how Guardz can help protect your clients from ransomware.
