Semperis, a provider of AI-powered identity security and cyber resilience, recently published results of a global ransomware study to understand their experience with ransomware over the last 12 months.
The 2025 Ransomware Risk Report: Essential Guidance for Building Operational Resilience Against Cyberattacks found that:
47 percent of attacked companies reported that hackers threatened to file regulatory complaints against them if they didn’t report the incident.
69 percent of companies that were victimized by ransomware paid a ransom.
50 percent of respondents cited cybersecurity threats as the top threat to business resilience.
The top cybersecurity challenge facing organizations is the sophistication of attacks (37 percent), while next (32 percent) is attacks against organizations’ identity infrastructure. Nearly 20 percent of companies that paid a ransom either received corrupt decryption keys or the hackers still published stolen data after stating they would not.
Former US National Cyber Director and Semperis Strategic Advisor Chris Inglis suggests that now is not the time for companies to get a false sense of security. He says, “Now is not the time for complacency. True regret isn’t knowing what you should have done; it’s not having done what you knew was needed and had the means to do.”
Looking specifically at findings from the industrial sector:
81 percent were targeted with a ransomware attack in the past 12 months; half of which were successful.
63 percent of successfully attacked organizations paid ransom.
71 percent of successfully attacked organizations suffered multiple attacks, including 18 percent who were attacked the same day; 38 percent were attacked the same week; and 31 percent the same month.
The top 4 ransomware-related business disruptions were data loss or compromise, loss of revenue, cyberinsurance cancellation or premium hike, and job losses.
Aside from traditional threats such as system lockouts (49 percent) and data destruction (70 percent), organizations reported attackers threatened to file regulatory complaints against them (39 percent); release private or proprietary data (67 percent); or physical threats against executives or other staff (36 percent)
- 66 percent of organizations paid over $500K in total annual ransom.
- 83 percent of attacks compromised the identity infrastructure.
- The top three cybersecurity challenges include increased frequency or sophistication of attacks, legacy vulnerabilities or technical debt, and attacks against the identity infrastructure.
Jen Easterly, the former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA) believes there are signs of defenders increasingly winning battles in the ransomware fight with criminal enterprises. “I believe that we can make ransomware a shocking anomaly. And that is the world I want to live in: A world where software vulnerabilities are so rare that they make the nightly news, not the morning meeting. A world where cyberattacks are as infrequent as plane collisions. I do believe we can get there.”
