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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallRansomware remains an active, adaptable threat, but the latest figures do not prove a single, globally representative year-over-year increase. The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) report recorded more than 3,600 ransomware complaints, reported losses exceeding $32 million, and 63 new variants identified through IC3. Those are reported complaints and losses—not a census of attacks or total economic damage. Organizations reduce risk most effectively with layered identity, patching, segmentation, detection, backup, supplier-management, and response practices.
What is ransomware?
Ransomware is malicious software designed to block access to computer files, systems, or networks until money is paid. The FBI describes delivery through routes such as email attachments, advertisements, links, or malware-hosting websites. Once active, malware can affect local drives, attached storage, and networked computers.
Modern operations may also steal data before encrypting systems. Criminals then threaten to publish the information, contact customers, or disrupt operations unless a demand is paid. This combination is commonly called double extortion: the victim faces both loss of availability and a confidentiality threat.
Is ransomware really increasing?
The strongest current official measure is the FBI’s 2025 IC3 Annual Report. It records substantial reported activity and continuing innovation, but it should not be presented as a definitive global trend line. Complaints can change because of reporting behavior, investigative activity, or changes in how incidents are classified.
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| FBI IC3 2025 measure | What it means |
|---|---|
| More than 3,600 complaints | Ransomware incidents reported to IC3 during 2025; not all attacks that occurred. |
| Reported losses exceeding $32 million | Losses reported to IC3. The FBI says these figures generally exclude lost business, time, wages, files, equipment, and third-party remediation; some victims supplied no loss amount, and incidents reported directly to FBI field offices are excluded. |
| 63 new variants | Variants identified via IC3, averaging 5.25 per month. |
| 56.8% | Share of IC3-reported ransomware incidents attributed to the ten most frequently reported variants. |
The ten leading variants named by the report were Akira, Qilin, INC./Lynx/Sinobi, BianLian, Play, Ransomhub, Lockbit, Dragonforce, SAFEPAY, and Medusa. They most affected critical manufacturing, healthcare and public health, and government facilities. The defensible conclusion is that ransomware remains active, diverse, and operationally adaptive—not that one number proves a universal increase everywhere.
Why does the risk persist?
Internet exposure and unpatched weaknesses
Internet-facing VPN gateways, remote-desktop services, applications, and firmware are attractive entry points when they contain known exploited vulnerabilities or unnecessary public services. Attackers can scan continuously, so a patching delay can become an intrusion window.
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Stolen or weak credentials
Compromised passwords and poorly protected remote-access accounts can give an intruder a legitimate-looking path into email, administrative consoles, and critical systems. Unused accounts, default credentials, and excessive administrator rights increase the potential damage.
User interaction
Malicious attachments, links, advertisements, and websites can persuade a user or a browser to run malware. Training helps, but it cannot replace technical controls that limit what one compromised account or device can reach.
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Flat networks and reachable backups
Once inside, an attacker may move laterally through broad network trust and shared credentials. Backups connected to production systems, administered from the same accounts, or stored without immutability can be encrypted or deleted as part of the attack.
Third-party and obsolete technology
Suppliers, managed services, and unsupported operating systems can extend the attack surface. The FBI’s cyber-resilience guidance emphasizes maintaining a vendor-access inventory, retiring end-of-life technology, and removing access when it is no longer required.
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Criminal operations adapt
A CISA/FBI partner advisory dated August 10, 2026, describes Gunra, which emerged in April 2025 and expanded into a ransomware-as-a-service affiliate program. The advisory reports double extortion and cases in which backup features were disabled and backup or archived data was deleted at both a primary data center and a disaster-recovery center. Those are Gunra-specific observations, not a description of every group.
How can an organization prevent ransomware?
No single product prevents ransomware. Use mutually reinforcing controls and assign an owner, measurable target, and recovery consequence to each one.
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1. Design backups for recovery, not just storage
- Keep at least three copies of critical data on two media types, with at least one copy offline and immutable (the FBI’s 3-2-1 pattern).
- Encrypt backups and protect the backup platform with separate administrative accounts and strong authentication.
- Disconnect removable media and other copies when backup jobs finish; secure the media physically.
- Cover data, system configurations, identity services, applications, and other dependencies needed to resume operations.
- Verify that jobs completed and perform routine test restores. Record restoration time and whether the result is usable.
An external hard drive can provide a small organization with one offline copy, but it is not a complete defense. It must be disconnected when not in use, secured, rotated appropriately, and included in restore tests; buying a drive alone does not provide enterprise-grade immutability.
2. Protect identities and remote access
- Require multifactor authentication, especially for webmail, VPN, cloud consoles, backup systems, and critical applications.
- Remove default credentials and unused accounts.
- Use separate administrative accounts, grant least privilege, and restrict where administrators may sign in.
- Review privileged access regularly and revoke it promptly when roles or contracts end.
3. Patch and reduce the public attack surface
- Inventory internet-reachable systems and prioritize known exploited vulnerabilities, especially on VPN and remote-access infrastructure.
- Keep operating systems, applications, and firmware supported and current; retire or isolate end-of-life technology.
- Remove public services that are not necessary and use authenticated, brokered remote access for those that are.
4. Detect intrusions and contain movement
- Use endpoint detection and response and network-traffic monitoring to identify unusual execution, credential use, and lateral movement.
- Segment user, server, operational, backup, and administrative networks so a compromised endpoint cannot freely reach all systems.
- Centralize authentication, email, endpoint, network, DNS, remote-access, and cloud audit logs.
- Preserve logs in protected or immutable storage; attackers may try to erase evidence before encrypting systems.
5. Manage supplier access
- Maintain a current list of every supplier with network or data access and assign an internal owner.
- Require strong authentication and least privilege where feasible, monitor supplier gateways, and remove access at contract end.
- Set expectations for encryption, incident notification, and control verification in agreements.
6. Prepare people and operations
- Maintain an incident-response playbook naming decision-makers, containment actions, evidence-preservation steps, and communications roles.
- Exercise the plan with technical, legal, communications, operations, and leadership teams.
- Maintain a continuity plan that identifies essential functions, manual workarounds, restoration priorities, and recovery-time needs.
- Keep law-enforcement contacts available before an incident occurs.
How do ransomware attacks get into organizations?
Common routes include phishing attachments and links, malicious websites or advertisements, exposed services, exploitation of unpatched vulnerabilities, and stolen credentials used against remote access. Third-party connections can provide another path. The initial foothold is only one part of the risk: excessive privileges, flat networks, and reachable backups determine how far an intruder can progress.
Do offline backups protect against ransomware?
They can substantially improve recovery prospects because an attacker operating in production cannot directly encrypt or delete a genuinely disconnected copy. Protection is conditional: the copy must be complete, protected from backup-administrator compromise, regularly verified, and restorable. Test the systems and data required for business operations, not merely a sample file.
What should an organization do during an attack?
- Activate the incident-response plan and establish who can authorize containment and restoration.
- Isolate affected systems as appropriate, taking care not to destroy volatile evidence or interrupt essential safety functions.
- Preserve logs, ransom notes, affected devices, and other evidence; do not allow routine retention policies to erase them.
- Secure accounts and backup infrastructure, and determine whether data was exfiltrated as well as encrypted.
- Coordinate restoration from clean, tested backups, prioritizing essential services and identity dependencies.
- Contact the local FBI field office or report the incident to IC3, and meet applicable legal and regulatory notification duties.
Should an organization pay a ransomware demand?
The FBI states that it does not support paying a ransom. Payment cannot guarantee decryption, restoration, confidentiality, or deletion of stolen data, and it can encourage further criminal activity. Any decision must involve leadership, legal counsel, insurers, law enforcement, and applicable sanctions and regulatory analysis. A payment decision does not replace containment, evidence preservation, notification, or recovery work.
How to evaluate a security or recovery service
Compare capabilities rather than looking for a single “ransomware product.” Ask providers to demonstrate:
Quick Recap
- Offline or immutable backup coverage and documented restore-test results.
- MFA coverage, privileged-access controls, and separation of backup administration.
- Endpoint, network, cloud, and log-retention visibility.
- Segmentation and the provider’s authority to contain systems quickly.
- Exposure and supplier-access inventory and monitoring.
- Recovery-time commitments, continuity support, capacity, encryption, compatibility, and recovery speed.
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