Malware Statistics 2025: Global Cyber Threat Trends and Costs

• Global Breach Costs: The average cost of a data breach decreased to ~$4.44 million in 2025, down ~9% from the all-time high in 2024. However, costs surged in the U.S. to $10.22 million per incident, a record high as attackers focus on big game targets. The cost per stolen record also ticked up to about $169 on average, reflecting the rising value of personal data.

• Ransomware Economics: Ransomware remains devastating. Median ransom payments skyrocketed to ~$1.5 million by mid-2024, and the largest known payout hit $75 million by a Fortune 50 firm in 2024. While fewer victims are paying ransoms, overall payment incidents fell ~27% YoY, those who do pay face far higher demands, the average ransom demand exceeded $5 million in 2024. Roughly 16% of ransomware victims paid in 2024, more than double the rate in 2023, with much higher payment rates over 50% in critical sectors like healthcare.

• Double Extortion Norm: Data theft accompanies encryption in 90% of ransomware attacks in 2024, up from just 10% in 2019, making double extortion the norm. Even triple extortion threatening a victim’s customers or partners appeared in ~27% of cases. This tactic pressures even well-prepared organizations with backups to pay, since criminals threaten to leak sensitive data.

• Initial Infection Vectors: Human error and social engineering continue to be leading causes of breaches. Phishing is the single most common entry point, implicated in roughly 15–20% of breaches and costing organizations ~$4.9M per incident on average. Over 57% of organizations face phishing attempts weekly or daily, showing the sheer volume of social engineering attempts. Attackers also increasingly exploit stolen credentials and unpatched software vulnerabilities, supply chain compromises were the second most-prevalent breach vector in 2025 and nearly as costly as phishing avg. $4.91M.

• Info-Stealers & Access Brokers: Before deploying ransomware, attackers often use infostealer malware to harvest credentials and session cookies. In 2025 an estimated 7.7 million stolen login logs are available for sale on dark markets, where access to a compromised account can cost as little as $10. Commodity stealers like RedLine, Lumma and RisePro feed this underground economy, enabling even low-skilled actors to buy their way into corporate networks.

• IoT and Botnet Threats: The Internet of Things is under siege. Around 820,000 attacks on IoT devices occur per day in 2025 on average. The majority estimated ~58% of these compromises are geared toward cryptojacking and hijacking IoT devices’ computing power to mine cryptocurrency. The Telnet protocol remains a primary attack vector for IoT, in Q3 2025, 57% of Telnet-based IoT attacks observed originated from China. Mirai-family botnets and variants like Gafgyt and NyaDrop dominate IoT malware, continually scanning for devices with default passwords to recruit.

• Desktop OS Malware: Windows continues to bear the brunt, accounting for roughly 87% of malware detections in 2025. PowerShell-based malware PS1 scripts is the top threat on Windows, representing ~22% of identified malware samplesa sign that attackers favor fileless living-off-the-land techniques. macOS is not immune: it saw ~13% of malware detections. Notably, macOS malware was led by viruses 28% and trojans 26% in 2025, with a rise in adware and riskware as Apple’s enterprise presence grows. A new infostealer named Atomic macOS Stealer AMOS emerged, spreading via poisoned Google Ads and targeting crypto wallet keys and iCloud passwords.

• Cloud & Linux Attacks: Threat actors are increasingly targeting Linux-based systems that underpin cloud and data center infrastructure. In early 2025, the number of Linux users encountering exploits was roughly 1.5–2× higher than the year prior, as attackers seek to breach servers, containers, and virtual machines. Attackers frequently abuse unpatched VPN, firewall, and cloud infrastructure vulnerabilities to gain initial access for example, the Akira ransomware group exploited a 2024 SonicWall firewall flaw to bypass MFA and infiltrate networks. ESXi and Linux-targeting ransomware surged as well, encrypting entire VMware host servers to paralyze organizations.

• Mobile Malware: Mobile infection rates show a sharp divide: Android devices are about 50× more likely to be compromised than iOS. Attacks on Android users jumped ~29% in H1 2025 vs. H1 2024, including a 4× increase in banking trojans that quietly steal banking app logins. Common tactics include malicious apps sideloaded from third-party stores and abuse of Android’s Accessibility services to capture screen content. On iOS, large-scale malware is rarer due to Apple’s locked-down ecosystem but high-profile spyware e.g. Pegasus and zero-click exploits continue to target iPhones of journalists, activists, and officials. In 2024, a trojan dubbed Goldtrowel/GoldDigger even used Apple’s TestFlight to trick iOS users into installing malicious beta apps, aiming to steal biometric and banking data. Notably, smishing SMS phishing makes up over half of iOS-focused attacks, exploiting the human element rather than iOS software flaws.

• Industry Hotspots: The healthcare sector suffered the most breaches in 2024, comprising about 23% of reported incidents surpassing finance for the first time. A staggering 67% of healthcare organizations were hit by ransomware in 2024, and criminals succeeded in compromising or deleting backups in 66% of those attacks. The average ransomware recovery cost for a healthcare breach excluding ransom reached $2.57M in 2024. Financial services remain a prime target as well, the average breach in finance cost ~$5.6M, and over 60% of financial firms’ breaches trace back to third-party vendors lacking security monitoring. Meanwhile, cryptocurrency platforms were plundered for over $3.4B in 2025, a record-high loss driven by the $1.5B Bybit exchange hack in Feb 2025. State-backed North Korean groups were responsible for at least $2.02B of crypto theft in 2025, often by infiltrating crypto firms with insider IT moles.

• Threat Actors & APTs: Geopolitical cyber activity blurred with crime. Russia-based groups remained the most prolific ransomware actors, benefitting from safe harbor and extensive money laundering networks e.g. the Kremlin-tolerated Garantex exchange processed >$1.3B in illicit crypto for gangs. North Korea’s Lazarus Group shifted to larger heists, fewer hacks, and bigger paydays. The Bybit incident alone was 44% of all crypto stolen in 2025. China-linked APTs focused on espionage and pre-positioning: quickly weaponizing new zero-day exploits in VPNs, routers, and critical infrastructure to ensure persistence for potential future conflicts. Other regions saw spikes too for instance, Poland was bombarded with over 1,700 cyberattacks per week in 2024 amid the Ukraine war fallout, and countries like Brazil and Nigeria emerged as regional cybercrime hubs e.g. banking malware and BEC scams.

• Malware & AI Convergence: 2024–2025 marked the rise of AI both as a threat and a defensive aid. About 1 in 6 breaches in 2025 involved attackers using AI e.g. AI-written phishing lures, deepfake voice calls. Some 35% of these AI-enhanced attacks used deepfake content, for example, cloned voices of CEOs to approve fraudulent wire transfers. On the flip side, organizations that extensively deployed AI-powered security shaved 80 days off breach response times and saved nearly $1.9M per breach compared to those without AI. A new risk is Shadow AI employees unwittingly leaking data to public AI tools. Such incidents added an estimated $670k in costs to breaches on average due to data escaping enterprise control, and 20% of companies experienced a security incident due to unsanctioned AI use by staff.

• Key Trend Speed & Scale of Attacks: Threats are escalating in speed. The window from vulnerability disclosure to active exploitation has shrunk to mere hours for critical flaws, as seen in the rapid mass exploitation of 2024 vulnerabilities like MoveIT Transfer and ScreenConnect. In early 2025, about 28% of exploits occurred within 24 hours of a new CVE’s release. Attack scale is also skewed: while most attacks remain small, the top 3 hacks in 2025 accounted for 69% of total losses in crypto showing the outsized impact of mega-incidents. This fat-tailed risk means a single breach can be catastrophic.

• Outlook Industrialized Cybercrime: Data indicates a maturing cybercrime economy. Ransomware has evolved into RaaS cartels with customer service, and stolen data markets are booming. If cybercrime were measured as an economy, its cost is projected around $10.5 trillion in 2025, on par with the GDP of major nations. Experts predict autonomous AI agents will soon conduct attacks at scale without direct human hackers, forcing a shift from pure prevention to resilience i.e. rapid detection, containment, and recovery. In short, while average losses per incident may stabilize thanks to better defenses, the threat landscape is high-volume, high-consequence defined by fewer but bigger heists, intelligent malware, and the imperative for organizations to harden their defenses continuously.

Malware has become a bellwether of the cyber threat landscape in 2024–2025. During this period, cyberattacks not only increased in number but fundamentally changed in character. We’ve seen the rise of an industrialized cybercrime economy, where criminal groups operate like enterprises and nation-state hackers blur the line between espionage and profit. This report analyzes comprehensive malware statistics for 2025 on a global scale from the financial fallout of breaches to the technical evolution of threats to paint a data-driven picture of where we stand in the fight against malicious software and cyberattacks.

Several headline trends emerge from the data. First, the financial impact of cyber incidents is as high as ever, even though some averages show a slight dip. The global average data breach cost in 2025 actually declined a bit to $4.44M after peaking in 2024, suggesting that improved response plans and security measures are better at containing everyday breaches. But this masks a harsher reality: targeted attacks are hitting harder. In the U.S., for example, breach costs jumped to record levels as skilled adversaries focus on high-value organizations. Secondly, ransomware continues to dominate headlines. The past year saw an unprecedented ransom of $75 million paid and a continued arms race between ransomware gangs and defenders. Third, the attack surface is growing more complex with cloud servers, IoT gadgets, and mobile devices all under assault. Malware is no longer just a PC problem, it’s a threat to hospitals, critical infrastructure, and personal smartphones alike. Finally, the infusion of Artificial Intelligence is accelerating both sides of the conflict. AI is helping cybercriminals craft more convincing attacks like deepfake phishing even as organizations turn to AI for faster threat detection.

In the sections that follow, we delve into these statistics and trends in detail. We’ll define what malware statistics encompasses in 2025 and examine key metrics globally. From there, we break down the cost implications of attacks, the common attack vectors and malware delivery methods, and how different industries and regions are impacted. We highlight major incidents and threat actor activities that shaped 2024–25, and identify emerging trends such as AI-driven attacks and the rush to exploit zero-day flaws. Throughout, the focus is on translating the numbers into insight: What do these stats mean for organizations’ risk management? The aim is to provide a clear, factual, and comprehensive analysis akin to reports by IBM Security, Verizon’s DBIR, and ENISA, but using only public data and open research. In the end, we also outline best practices informed by these statistics practical steps organizations can take to bolster their security posture given the current threat landscape.

What Are Malware Statistics?

In simple terms, malware statistics refer to data that quantifies malicious software activity and its consequences. This includes metrics like how many malware attacks are occurring, what types of malware are most prevalent, how attackers are delivering malware, and the impact of these attacks financial losses, downtime, data stolen, etc.. Think of it as the vital signs of the cyber threat environment: numbers that tell us the frequency, severity, and nature of malware incidents.

For example, consider a hospital’s IT network. If we say that 67% of healthcare organizations were hit by ransomware last year, that is a malware statistic indicating prevalence in a sector. Or if we note that the average ransom demand is now over $5 million, that statistic speaks to the economic scale of the threat. Malware stats can also be technical, such as 22% of malware on Windows in 2025 were malicious PowerShell scripts which tells us what techniques hackers favor.

These statistics matter because they help us understand risk in quantifiable terms. Just as a public health official tracks infection rates and mortality percentages during an epidemic, cybersecurity analysts track malware infection rates and breach costs during this ongoing cyber pandemic. For instance, knowing that phishing emails account for about 16% of data breaches helps organizations justify investments in email filtering and employee training. Or learning that nearly 1 in 2 breaches now involve stolen personal data highlights the need for better data protection and encryption.

To put it in a practical analogy: If cyber defense is like protecting a city, malware statistics are the crime stats that inform the police where to patrol. They show hotspots e.g. healthcare or finance sectors, common break-in methods phishing, unpatched software, etc., and the typical damage of an incident ransom amounts, records compromised. By examining malware statistics, businesses can gauge where they stand. Are attacks increasing or decreasing? Which threats should we prioritize? and measure the effectiveness of security efforts over time.

In summary, malware statistics quantify the who, what, how, and impact of cyberattacks. They encompass things like the number of attacks, their growth trends, the vectors used in email, exploits, etc., the types of malware ransomware, spyware, trojans, and outcome metrics cost, downtime, data loss. These numbers provide a data-driven foundation for understanding cybersecurity threats and making informed decisions about how to mitigate them.

Global Overview of Malware Trends 2024 vs 2025

Globally, the malware and breach landscape in 2024–2025 can be described as stabilizing in volume but intensifying in targeted impact. Broadly speaking, some aggregate metrics improved slightly in 2025 compared to 2024, but specific regions and sectors saw worse outcomes due to more aggressive attacks. Below is a summary table of a few key global indicators:

Several insights stand out from the global comparison above:

• Slight Relief in Average Breach Cost: After climbing for years, the global average breach cost dipped to $4.44M in 2025 from $4.88M in 2024. This could signal that investments in incident response, threat detection, and perhaps wider adoption of cyber insurance are paying off in limiting damage. The average time to detect and contain breaches also improved modestly 241 days in 2025, down from ~258 days in 2024, which can reduce losses by shortening attackers’ dwell time. However, this global average masks regional extremes notably the United States, which hit an unprecedented $10.2M average breach cost. This indicates that mega-breaches in the U.S. with its high regulatory penalties and legal costs heavily skew the impact. In contrast, regions like Europe saw stable or even lower breach costs on average, partly due to fewer records breached in each incident and possibly stronger preventive controls.

• Ransomware Payments and Demands Climbed: Globally, ransomware trends remained dire. The typical ransom demand jumped to the mid-seven figures around $2.5–5M by 2024. While many organizations refused to pay, those that did faced much larger payouts. The median payment in 2024 reached $1.5M, compared to well under $250k a year prior, a reflection that ransomware gangs are now big game hunting rich targets who can afford larger extortions. Interestingly, industry data showed the number of ransom payments decreased ~27% fewer, but the total value paid increased. This implies improved backups and resilience are preventing some payouts, yet when vital systems are at stake e.g. a national hospital network or pipeline operator, victims are shelling out record sums.

• More Ransomware Actors Despite Crackdowns: Law enforcement efforts in 2023–24 took down several known ransomware outfits through arrests and sanctions, but new groups quickly filled the void. In 2024, researchers tracked 75 distinct ransomware groups leaking victim data, including 33 newcomers/rebrands that year. This was about a 30% increase in the population of active groups. It’s truly a whack-a-mole situation if one group like REvil or LockBit goes quiet, another like BlackCat or the emergent RansomHub rises to capture the market. The ransomware-as-a-service model makes it easy for affiliates to switch brands or start their own. The global implication is that the ransomware threat isn’t abating, it’s fragmenting, which complicates attribution and defense.

• IoT and Vulnerabilities Expanding the Attack Surface: Globally, the attack surface potential entry points keeps growing via the Internet of Things and a flood of new vulnerabilities. The number of new CVEs software flaws hit a record ~30k in 2024. That's about 80+ new vulnerabilities disclosed every day. Security teams are struggling to prioritize and patch, which attackers exploit e.g., the rapid weaponization of high-profile bugs like the 2024 MOVEit file transfer zero-day. Meanwhile, IoT attacks are at an all-time high, averaging an estimated 800k+ a day worldwide. Most of these are automated background noise botnets scanning and compromising routers, cameras, smart devices that lack strong security. But the sheer volume means any exposed device is likely to be probed within minutes of connecting to the internet. It underscores that cyber threats are truly ubiquitous: from cloud servers down to smart lightbulbs, nothing connected is immune.

In essence, the global trend can be summarized as fewer easy pickings, more high-stakes heists. General improvements in cyber hygiene might be preventing some run-of-the-mill breaches, bringing averages down. Yet determined attackers are doubling down on hitting the most lucrative targets causing record damages in specific cases. Thus, organizations worldwide need to remain vigilant: even if you see a slight dip in overall incidents, the possibility of a black swan event like a major ransomware or supply chain breach is higher than ever.

Cost and Impact Breakdown of Malware Incidents

One of the most telling ways to appreciate the gravity of malware threats is to look at their economic impact. Malware-related incidents, data breaches, ransomware attacks, business email compromises, etc. carry many costs from immediate response and recovery expenses to longer-term damage like lost business and reputational harm. Here we break down some key cost statistics and impacts from 2024–2025:

Several points emerge from the above:

• Breaches Are Costly, Especially in Certain Regions: The average cost of a breach including investigation, remediation, customer notification, business downtime, etc. is in the multimillions. While the global average fell slightly to $4.44M, in the U.S. it surged to over $10M. This disparity highlights how geography and regulation influence breach costs U.S. companies face higher legal liability, customer lawsuit risk, and regulatory fines for instance, many U.S. states require costly breach notifications, and the threat of class action lawsuits is high. On the other hand, other regions like the Middle East and Europe actually saw breach costs decrease in 2025, likely due to fewer mega-incidents and perhaps improved defensive postures. The cost per individual record lost went up slightly to around $169 globally, indicating data, especially personal data, is ever-more valuable on black markets and to criminals. When intellectual property is stolen, the costs can be extreme breaches involving sensitive IP averaged as high as $178M in losses according to IBM, though those cases are rare outliers.

• Ransomware Financial Impact: Ransomware represents a unique cost scenario organizations incur not just IT recovery costs but often extortion payments and possibly fines for exposing data. One way to gauge ransomware’s cost is looking at specific sectors: in education, for example, the average cost to recover from a ransomware attack more than doubled from $1.59M to $3.76M in one year. This jump noted in 2024 reflects that attacks are getting more disruptive. School systems had to rebuild networks from scratch in many cases, incur weeks of downtime, extra costs, and invest in better future protections. Similarly, in healthcare, even excluding ransom payments, remediation costs averaged $2.57M in 2024. When ransom payments are included, the total bill can be much higher: e.g. a major healthcare company paid $22M ransom in 2024 to a gang BlackCat to get running again and that’s just the payment, not counting IT restoration of nationwide systems. Such figures underscore that beyond the ransom itself, organizations face significant collateral costs, incident response firms, PR/crisis management, loss of business during outages, regulatory penalties especially in healthcare for HIPAA violations, etc..

• Cybercrime at Macro Scale Trillions: When aggregated, the cost of all cybercrime globally is almost hard to fathom. Recent analyses project cybercrime will cost the world $10.5 trillion annually by 2025, up from around $8 trillion in 2023. To contextualize, $10.5T is larger than the GDP of many G7 countries, it suggests that if cybercrime were an economy, it would rival the third or fourth largest economy on the planet. These tallies include all forms of cyber incidents, fraud, theft of money, intellectual property theft, recovery costs, etc.. The rise to $10T+ is fueled by ransomware’s economic impact, rampant identity theft, and the cascading costs of breaches like share price drops or lost customers. It’s a sobering statistic: malware and hacking aren’t just an IT issue, they have become a drag on the entire global economy.

• Security Automation Pays Off: On a positive note, one factor shown to reduce breach costs is the use of AI and automation in cybersecurity. Companies that have extensively rolled out automation like AI-driven threat detection, automated incident response playbooks, etc. saw on average $1.9M lower breach costs and contained breaches 80 days faster than those with no automation. That’s a significant savings essentially cutting the financial impact by ~40%. It indicates that early detection often thanks to AI systems flagging anomalies and rapid response can dramatically limit the damage from attacks. Faster containment means attackers steal fewer records, cause less downtime, and overall the incident doesn’t spiral into a crisis. This statistic strongly supports investment in advanced security operations tools, in an era when attacks move at machine speed e.g. automated ransomware spreading, only machine-speed defenses can keep up.

• Hidden Breach Costs Reputation and Resilience: It’s worth noting that many breach costs are not directly obvious in statistics but manifest over time. Customer churn after a breach is a major cost: if customers lose trust e.g. a breached bank or retailer, the business loses revenue for years. We also have regulatory fines for instance, under GDPR in Europe, companies have faced multi-million Euro fines for breaches. Those don’t always show up in average cost calculations. And then there’s cyber insurance: premiums have soared by 50-100% after a bad year of ransomware payouts. So an indirect cost of the malware surge is much higher insurance expenditure industry-wide or organizations going without insurance because it’s unaffordable or has exclusions for nation-state attacks.

In summary, while statistics give us point-in-time numbers like $X million per breach, the true impact of malware incidents often radiates outward from immediate recovery to lost future business. The 2025 data suggests organizations on average are getting a handle on containing costs through better prep and response, but the outliers are getting worse. It’s a bit of a barbell effect: many minor incidents are handled better keeping averages stable, but a few major hits are more expensive than ever, pulling the totals into the trillions. This dichotomy underscores why focusing only on averages can be misleading, prudent risk management prepares for the worst-case, not just the typical case.

Attack Vector and Delivery Method Distribution

Understanding how malware and attackers get into systems is crucial. In 2024–25, the initial access vectors, the pathways through which threat actors establish a foothold, continued to be dominated by social engineering and exposed systems. Below is a breakdown of the primary attack vectors/delivery methods and their prevalence:

Estimates based on multiple sources IBM, Verizon DBIR, Sophos actual proportions vary by dataset. Impact Level refers to the potential severity if that vector is successful.

From the above distribution, a few key observations:

• Phishing Reigns as King: Social engineering through phishing is consistently the top initial attack method. Multiple studies confirm this. For instance, IBM’s data shows phishing was the leading attack vector, playing a role in roughly 1/3 to 1/2 of breaches when counting things like BEC Business Email Compromise. Verizon’s 2024 DBIR found 74% of breaches involved human element errors or social engineering, and among those, phishing was a huge component. Attackers prefer phishing because it’s often easier to trick a human than to hack a computer. A single click can yield credentials or foothold malware. Despite years of training programs, about 4% of employees still click phishing emails according to Verizon. Notably, AI has supercharged phishing volume. There's been a 4,000%+ increase in phishing since generative AI came along, as tools can craft convincing lures at scale. This means phishing will likely continue to dominate.

• Credential Abuse & Brokered Access: Closely tied to phishing is the use of stolen credentials. In many breaches there’s no malware per se at first the attackers simply log in using legit credentials perhaps obtained via a prior phishing or through an info-stealer malware infection elsewhere. This is why multi-factor authentication MFA is crucial, unfortunately, attackers have responded with adversary-in-the-middle AiTM phishing kits that can steal session cookies and even 2FA tokens in real-time. Still, credential stuffing and password spraying remain widespread on any exposed login. For example, ransomware operators frequently start by using a leaked RDP password sold on the dark web. Given the millions of credentials circulating from past breaches, this vector remains highly effective, especially against organizations that reuse passwords or don’t have MFA.

• Unpatched Software A Persistent Risk: The data shows a substantial chunk perhaps 1 in 6 breaches start with vulnerability exploits with no user involvement, just a hacker exploiting an open weakness. These could be in web applications, network devices, or operating systems. In 2024 we saw how quickly this can happen: the MOVEit Transfer zero-day exploit in mid-2024 was used by a cybercriminal gang to breach hundreds of organizations mostly via their third-party file transfer servers within a week or two of the vulnerability’s disclosure. Likewise, vulnerabilities in VPN appliances like Fortinet, SonicWall and virtualization platforms VMware ESXi have been leveraged to drop ransomware into environments with no phishing at all. The surge in new CVEs as noted earlier ensures attackers have plenty of opportunities. Some ransomware groups even run port scans to find vulnerable systems, for instance, the Akira group scanning for vulnerable VPNs or RDP. This vector is particularly concerning because it can lead to mass exploitation events if a popular software has a flaw as seen with Log4Shell in late 2021.

• Remote Work Exposures RDP/VPN: The pandemic-driven shift to remote work left many organizations reliant on RDP, VPNs, and cloud services. Attackers certainly took note. Even in 2024–25, when many returned to offices, RDP brute-force attacks remained a staple for ransomware crews. If an organization hadn’t locked down RDP or was exposing it to the internet out of necessity, attackers would run tools to try common passwords or known credential pairs. It’s a less glamorous vector, but Coveware and other incident responders often cite RDP compromise as a frequent root cause for small-to-medium business ransomware incidents.

• Supply Chain Attacks Are a Force Multiplier: The stats highlight that about 14% of breaches may stem from third-party compromises and these can be some of the worst incidents because they bypass traditional defenses. When you trust a vendor’s software or access, an attacker that corrupts that trust can hit you in a way that’s hard to detect. This was exemplified by the SolarWinds incident late 2020, and in 2025 we continue to see supply-chain issues for instance, attackers hacking IT service providers to in turn hack their customers. One survey found only 37% of orgs monitor their vendors for cybersecurity so this remains a huge blind spot. It’s also why supply chain compromise was the second costliest vector breaches via third-parties averaged $4.91M, slightly more than the overall average. Essentially, a smaller vendor’s security lapse can become your very expensive breach.

• Less Common Vectors: Some things like USB malware drops or on-site rogue devices, while classic in spy thrillers, are not significant in the broader statistics. They do happen especially in targeted espionage against air-gapped networks, or disgruntled insiders plugging in keyloggers, but they’re a tiny fraction of overall incidents. The data also shows adversary-in-the-middle AiTM techniques are rising, but those are often adjunct to phishing as a way to defeat MFA. Malvertising campaigns with fake ads leading to malware had a resurgence in 2024 e.g., a campaign dubbed Greatness used Google ads to pose as Office 365 login pages, stealing creds. Again, those ultimately feed into phishing/cred theft stats.

In conclusion, the distribution of attack vectors in 2025 reaffirms an old truth: humans are the weakest link in cybersecurity. Phishing and credential theft combined likely account for well over half of breaches. However, purely technical attacks, unpatched software, etc. are still very significant and arguably growing as a share because automated exploits and scanning make it easy for attackers to find low-hanging fruit. Organizations must therefore adopt a two-pronged defense: reduce the human risk through training, phishing tests, and robust email security and reduce the tech risk through diligent vulnerability management and network segmentation to contain any breach. In short, lock your digital doors and train your people not to open them for strangers.

Industry Impact Analysis

Malware and cyber threats do not impact all industries equally attackers often tailor their tactics to the sector, seeking the biggest payoff. The 2024–2025 period saw some clear industry-specific trends:

• Healthcare: This sector is in crisis from a cybersecurity standpoint. In 2024, healthcare was the most breached industry, accounting for roughly 23% of data breaches. It leapfrogged the finance sector in a number of incidents, which is historically unprecedented. Why healthcare? Attackers recognize hospitals and medical centers cannot tolerate downtime, it literally risks lives, making them prime targets for extortion. About 67% of healthcare organizations were hit by ransomware in 2024 up from 60% in 2023, and 95% of those attacks saw criminals attempt to destroy or encrypt backups. Sadly, in two-thirds of cases, the bad guys succeeded in compromising the backups, leaving hospitals with no choice but to pay or rebuild. For example, in 2024 the Qilin ransomware group attacked a major London healthcare system NHS/Synnovis labs, demanding $50M. When the victim refused, Qilin leaked nearly 1 million patient records including sensitive lab results, a nightmare scenario for patient privacy. Another case: a large U.S. healthcare provider CommonSpirit Health suffered delays in patient care after a ransomware hit over 140 hospitals. The impact on healthcare thus extends beyond money, it’s a patient safety issue. Recovery costs are also sky-high, the average breach cost in healthcare was $7.42M in 2025 highest of any industry, and that was actually down from an astronomical $9.77M in 2024 when several mega-breaches occurred. Healthcare organizations also face regulatory fines under laws like HIPAA when data is exposed. All these factors combined have made healthcare a focal point of cybersecurity discussions, even at government levels with warnings that ransomware on hospitals is a national emergency.

• Financial Services: Banks, insurers, and financial institutions continue to be heavily targeted, but they generally have more mature security meaning attackers often go after them via indirect means. In 2024, the number of attacks on financial orgs jumped ~47% YoY per some industry reports, showing that threat actors haven’t eased off. Breach costs in finance averaged $5.56M in 2025 second highest after healthcare. A significant observation in finance is the supply chain vulnerability: roughly 64% of financial firms’ data breaches trace back to a third-party service provider or vendor being the source of compromise according to surveys. For instance, an attack might come through a vulnerable fintech app integration, or a compromised credit card processor. Attackers target smaller vendors that serve multiple banks. A single weakness there can fan out into many institutions. We saw this in 2024 with a case where a popular banking IT managed service was hacked and used to distribute malware to credit unions. The types of malware common in finance include banking trojans like TrickBot, Dridex which siphon credentials, and ATM/POS malware used by crime groups to steal payment card data. State-sponsored hackers notably some linked to North Korea also target banks directly to attempt SWIFT wire fraud or cryptocurrency theft. So finance is hit by both criminal crews for profit and nation-state actors for geopolitical/economic gain. The silver lining is that financial institutions, due to regulations and past experience, often invest heavily in security, so their breach incidence rate is not the highest but when they are breached, the stakes are huge: access to money.

• Cryptocurrency Sector: The crypto world experienced massive thefts in 2024–2025, in what some have called the biggest bank heists in history, except the banks are exchanges and DeFi decentralized finance platforms. In just the first half of 2025, over $2.17B was stolen from crypto services exchanges, cross-chain bridges, and lending protocols. By the end of 2025, the tally exceeded $3.4B in crypto assets stolen. The single largest incident was the Bybit exchange hack in Feb 2025, with ~$1.5B stolen this one hack made up 44% of all crypto hack losses that year. It’s believed North Korean attackers were behind it, using a sophisticated manipulation of Bybit’s transaction signing process. Cryptocurrency platforms are attractive, they hold liquid, untraceable assets and often have immature security practices compared to traditional banks. Apart from big exchange hacks, we also see a trend of targeting individuals’ crypto wallets: about 37% of crypto stolen in 2025 came from personal wallet compromises phishing users into giving up their private keys. This is up from just ~7% a couple years before indicating attackers shifting to retail victims possibly because exchanges improved security a bit after the 2022–2023 wave of hacks. Another twist is the heavy involvement of North Korea’s Lazarus Group, which stole $2.02B in 2025 alone, likely to fund the DPRK regime. They have a playbook: infiltrate crypto companies with operatives posing as IT staff, or socially engineer crypto developers to run trojanized code, etc. The crypto sector, in summary, is like the Wild West multi-million dollar heists occur and often the perpetrators especially if nation-backed face little chance of prosecution. It’s spurred calls for stronger cybersecurity in the crypto industry and possibly government action since these thefts have national security implications DPRK uses stolen funds for its missile programs, per the UN.

• Education: Schools and universities remain targets, though 2024 interestingly saw a reported decline in the number of known ransomware attacks on the education sector 188 attacks in 2023 down to 116 in 2024. However, that statistic can be misleading, it may be that attacks aren’t always disclosed. And those attacks that did occur were more severe. The average recovery cost for lower education more than doubled as noted to $3.76M. Many K-12 schools, in particular, paid ransoms because they lacked the ability to fully restore from backups, one report noted 62% of attacked higher-ed institutions paid the ransom in 2024, up from 47% prior. This indicates desperation when transcripts, learning management systems, and even basic IT are locked up, academic operations halt. Another issue is that schools hold a trove of personal data including minors’ data which is highly sensitive, making breaches a privacy nightmare. In 2024 a hacker leaked thousands of students’ psychiatric evaluations from a Las Vegas school district after a failed ransom negotiation illustrating the human toll. Universities also face attacks aimed at research data theft, state actors hunting vaccine research, etc., during the pandemic era. Overall, education has a high volume of threats but often the least resources to deal with them, making it a soft target in the eyes of attackers.

• Retail and Consumer Brands: Retailers saw an uptick in cyberattacks as well, especially around peak shopping seasons. In Q2 2025, ransomware attacks on retail jumped by 58% compared to Q1 likely attackers gearing up before the holiday shopping period indicating seasonality in targeting. The average breach cost for retail was $3.54M in 2025, which is actually below the global average, but still an 18% increase from the prior year. Retail breaches often involve theft of customer data, credit card numbers, personal info or hitting e-commerce infrastructure with ransomware. One challenge for retail is the third-party risk: about 30% of retail breaches in 2025 were traced to third-party partners or suppliers, double the share from a year earlier. For example, a breach might start via a compromised point-of-sale vendor or a marketing firm with access to the retailer’s systems. Also, retail has had issues with Magecart-style web skimmers malware that siphons card data from checkout pages. On the plus side, many large retailers have beefed up security after learning hard lessons from incidents like the Target breach of 2013. But mid-market retail and hospitality chains remain juicy targets, as evidenced by multiple ransomware hits on hotel chains and restaurant POS providers in 2024.

• Government and Public Sector: Although not listed as a separate point above, it’s worth mentioning that government agencies worldwide are under constant assault as well. In 2024, government was actually the sector with the highest rate of ransomware attacks 68% of federal/central gov agencies surveyed were hit even higher than healthcare. This is partly due to geopolitical tensions e.g., Russian actors hitting European government offices amid the Ukraine war and partly due to the old infrastructure many agencies run. We saw city governments like Atlanta, years back, more recently small municipalities in the US and Europe getting crippled by ransomware. The public sector often can’t afford to pay high ransoms, but they also can’t afford the disruption, creating a dilemma. The data breach cost for government entities is relatively lower than the public sector average $2.86M in 2025, likely because the data might be less monetizable and budgets to calculate losses are smaller. However, the impact like inability for citizens to get services can be quite large relative to those budgets.

To summarize, attackers tailor their targets for maximum advantage:

• They hit healthcare for urgent ransom payouts and sensitive records.
• They hit finance and crypto for direct monetary gain and high-value transactions.
• They hit education and government as softer targets that still hold valuable personal data and where disruption can force a response.
• They hit retail to steal consumer payment data and exploit the interconnected supply chain.

Each industry must prioritize different controls: e.g., hospitals need rock-solid backup and emergency IT procedures, banks need aggressive third-party risk management and anti-fraud systems, retail needs to secure customer-facing apps and supply chain partnerships. The statistics clearly show that no sector is untouched, but the nature of attacks and losses can vary widely.

Regional Breakdown of Threats

Cyber threats have a global reach, but regional differences in targets, regulations, and attacker focus lead to varying impacts across geographies. Here’s a breakdown of notable regional trends in 2024–2025:

• North America USA and CanadNorth America, and the U.S. in particular, continues to be the prime target for high-impact cyberattacks. The average breach cost in the U.S. hit $10.22M in 2025 the highest of any region by a wide margin. The U.S. sees a disproportionate share of big game ransomware attacks and large data breaches, likely because U.S. companies hold vast troves of data and are more willing/able to pay large ransoms. The legal environment also drives up costs, notifications, and lawsuits. The types of attacks in the U.S. span everything, but we’ve seen critical infrastructure targeted e.g., pipelines, meat processing, ports as in the 2024 Port of Seattle ransomware incident. The U.S. government has been actively issuing sanctions against ransomware groups and even engaging in offensive cyber operations to disrupt them, but the threat persists. In Canada, threats are similar albeit on a smaller scale. Canadian companies had an average breach cost of $4.84M high, but about half the U.S. level, possibly thanks to less litigious fallout. North America also is where cyber insurance uptake is highest, which is a double-edged sword: it helps cover costs, but attackers know insured companies might be more likely to pay since insurance foots the bill, thus could attract attacks.

• Europe EU/UK: Europe’s threat landscape in 2024–25 was marked by increased targeting due to the geopolitical climate. For instance, Poland experienced an onslaught of attacks of over 1,700 attacks per organization per week in early 2024, which was reportedly the highest in the world at one point. This surge is linked to Poland’s role in supporting Ukraine, making it a bullseye for pro-Russian hackers. European countries in general saw more state-sponsored espionage from Russian and Belarusian actors around the war, and Chinese APTs spying on tech and government. The UK, Germany, France all had major ransomware incidents as well, though many European firms have adopted stricter security frameworks partly driven by GDPR compliance culture. Breach costs in Europe trended a bit downward e.g., Germany’s average breach cost fell to $4.03M in 2025 from $5.3M, perhaps because 2024 had some mega-breaches that didn’t repeat. Under GDPR, we also saw big fines: e.g., Ireland’s DPC fined companies like Meta hundreds of millions for data issues showing Europe emphasizes privacy consequences. Another regional trend: European healthcare was heavily hit e.g., the Irish health service attack in 2021 was a wake-up call, in 2025 a French hospital system was knocked offline. The EU is responding with initiatives like the NIS2 Directive to improve critical infrastructure security across member states.

• Asia-Pacific APAC: Asia is a mixed bag because it contains both some of the most cyber-mature countries like Japan, Australia, Singapore and some of the least various developing economies. One constant thorn is Chinese state-sponsored hacking. Many APAC nations India, Taiwan, and ASEAN countries face relentless espionage attempts. For example, Taiwan in 2025 reported 2.6 million cyber intrusion attempts per day from China targeting critical infrastructure. That figure underscores an almost cyber-war footing in that region. Meanwhile, India and South Korea saw declines in breach costs e.g., South Korea’s average breach cost dropped to $2.84M in 2025, possibly thanks to better readiness and perhaps fewer huge breaches reported. In Southeast Asia, financial and telco breaches have been frequent, some linked to Chinese hackers e.g., the hack of Singtel, a major telecom, via a third-party file transfer app in 2021 echoed in concerns in 2024. Australia had a rough 2022 with major breaches Optus, Medibank, and in 2023–24 those led to government reforms and greater awareness, it seems to have calmed slightly in 2025 with breach costs ticking down to $2.55M avg. Japan has faced an increase in ransomware. Some Japanese organizations quietly paid ransoms to avoid disruption of just-in-time manufacturing networks. APAC also experiences a lot of mobile threats for instance, one report showed countries like India and Indonesia had among the highest rates of Android malware due to the popularity of sideloading apps. In APAC, many consumers use unofficial app stores, making them more vulnerable to mobile adware, banking trojans, etc.

• Latin America Latin: America is seeing growing cybercrime activity, often originating from within the region. Brazil is notable it’s becoming a hub for banking trojans and fraud operations Brazilian malware like the Bizarro and Javali banking trojans have spread globally. Brazil had an average breach cost of only $1.22M in 2025 lowest in IBM’s survey, but that might belie underreporting or smaller breach sizes. Nonetheless, Latin American financial institutions have been targeted by both local and international actors. Mexican organizations faced attacks like any others, one concerning trend is ransomware gangs setting up affiliate networks in LatAm where law enforcement may be less equipped to respond. Government websites in Latin America also frequently suffer defacements and data leaks by hacktivists in 2024, several gov databases in Argentina and Chile were dumped online by hackers exploiting poor security. Overall, LatAm organizations may not have as large budgets for cybersecurity, making them attractive mid-tier targets for up-and-coming ransomware affiliates.

• Middle East & Africa METhe Middle East has extremely high average breach costs second only to the U.S., at $7.29M in 2025. This is partly due to many breaches in the oil & gas and energy sector which is prominent in ME, and perhaps because some nations like UAE, Saudi have deep pockets, making them ripe for extortion and large remediation efforts. Critical infrastructure in the Gulf has been targeted by Iran-based threat actors e.g., refinery and petrochemical hacks. Meanwhile, North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa are coming online rapidly and facing a surge in cybercrime though often less sophisticated. Nigeria stands out in Africa infamous for fraud schemes historically, it continues to be a hub for so-called Yahoo Boys conducting BEC Business Email Compromise scams globally. Nigerian groups have started partnering with or emulating ransomware gangs as well, according to INTERPOL. South Africa has seen major breaches of its financial firms and credit bureaus. Many African nations are still building basic cyber defense capabilities, so data on breaches is a bit sparse, but the trends follow global ones: increased ransomware targeting government ministries, utilities, more phishing especially around fintech/mobile money which is big in Africa, and use of commodity malware.

• Russia and Eastern Europe: It’s ironic, but Russia, a top perpetrator of cyberattacks abroad, also faces attacks primarily from Western-aligned hacktivists since the war in Ukraine began. In 2022–2023, groups like the IT Army of Ukraine launched DDoS and data-leak ops against Russian companies and government agencies. In 2024, Russia claimed the most cyberattacks were aimed at it though these were mostly low-impact vs. what Russian actors do elsewhere. Poland, as mentioned, bore the brunt in Eastern Europe. Ukraine itself remains under constant cyber fire from Russia with attempted grid takedowns, etc. but has become battle-hardened and actually repelled many big attacks. The Baltic states and Nordics also reported increased probing and some operations by Russia-linked groups ranging from ransomware as cover for sabotage to influence operations.

In summary, regional analysis highlights where emphasis is needed:

• North America needs to focus on critical infrastructure and large enterprise protection and grapple with the cost of breaches under its regulatory regime.
• Europe needs to continue strengthening cross-border cyber defenses especially as some countries are targeted for political reasons and enforcing compliance GDPR has been a double-edged sword: improved data handling but heavy fines after breaches.
• APAC must handle advanced state threats China, North Korea and secure their burgeoning digital economies especially the high mobile usage.
• LATAM and Africa are on the cyber frontier rapidly digitizing, but needing investment in cybersecurity to avoid becoming soft targets. Capacity building and international cooperation will be key there.
• The Middle East is a hotspot due to regional conflicts and high-value oil infrastructure, meaning top-tier APTs from Iran, etc. will continue to menace it.

Each region has its nuance, but one unifying theme is that no region can ignore cyber risk. The internet links them all, and threats routed through one region can strike in another. International coordination on threat intelligence and law enforcement e.g., through Interpol, Europol, joint cyber task forces has ramped up as a result because attackers certainly don’t respect borders.

Major Incidents and Attack Campaigns of 2024–2025

The period of 2024 and 2025 has been punctuated by several major cyber incidents and campaigns that illustrate the trends discussed. Here we summarize a few of the most significant:

• The $75 Million Ransom Dark Angels 2024: In mid-2024, a ransomware group dubbed Dark Angels, a rebrand of an older gang pulled off what is believed to be the largest confirmed ransom payment ever. They infected a Fortune 50 company name not publicly disclosed and managed to extract $75 million in ransom. This jaw-dropping payout shattered previous records which were around $40M and signaled that the ceiling for ransom demands had effectively been lifted. The attackers likely exfiltrated sensitive intellectual property and had such leverage that the company felt it had no choice but to pay. This incident is emblematic of the big game hunting trend of fewer attacks, but aiming for the absolute largest targets with the ability to pay huge sums.

• Bybit Cryptocurrency Exchange Hack Feb 2025: In a watershed moment for crypto cybersecurity, hackers compromised Bybit, a major cryptocurrency exchange, and stole approximately $1.5 billion worth of crypto assets. Chainalysis reported this was the biggest crypto theft ever, representing 44% of all crypto hacks in 2025 up to December. The hack was sophisticated: attackers exploited the exchange’s transaction signing infrastructure by likely inserting a rogue insider or tricking an employee. Notably, the U.S. The FBI attributed this hack to North Korean state actors Lazarus Group. The aftermath saw Bybit working with blockchain analytics firms to trace funds and even offering bounties for recovery, but as of late 2025 only a small fraction of the crypto had been recovered. This incident underlined the systemic risk in the crypto sector. One hack can have reverberations across markets temporarily, crypto prices wobbled on news of the theft and it demonstrated North Korea’s continued focus on crypto exchanges as quasi bank robberies to fund its regime.

• Qilin Ransomware’s Healthcare Rampage 2024–2025: Qilin also known as Agenda is a ransomware group that emerged and began specializing in healthcare targets. In late 2024, Qilin hit the UK’s National Health Service via an attack on a third-party IT provider Synnovis, which handles pathology for London hospitals. When an enormous £40M $50M ransom wasn’t paid by the NHS, Qilin dumped ~900,000 patient records online one of the largest healthcare data leaks in history. This included deeply sensitive data, medical tests, etc.. The incident caused delays in patient care and even has been tentatively linked to at least one patient death due to care disruption. Qilin wasn’t done, in Q3 2025, it was responsible for about 15% of all ransomware victims posted on leak sites in that quarter, indicating a prolific campaign. Its specialization in healthcare shows the rise of sector-focused ransomware ops that tailor their pressure knowing hospitals are likely to pay to avoid chaos. The Qilin saga also illustrated the ethical nightmare when patient data is weaponized.

• Secureworks’ Threat Group Proliferation 2024: In early 2024, Secureworks reported a concerning stat: despite many arrests and takedowns in 2021–2023, the number of active ransomware groups was 30% higher than the previous year, with 31 new groups appearing in a 12-month span. Groups like RansomHouse/RansomHub and BlackBasta gained prominence. RansomHub, for example, filled the void when another gang went quiet, and quickly racked up over 570 victims posted on its leak site nearly matching the infamous LockBit’s volume. This pattern of groups rising from the ashes of others often run by the same core people under new branding was a major theme of 2024. It confounded defenders because indicators of compromise IoCs can’t simply be tied to group names the actors morph, but their tools might persist or vice versa. Noteworthy is that affiliate-based models let groups scale quickly: RansomHub recruited affiliates from defunct gangs like BlackMatter, accelerating their ramp-up in activity.

• Port of Seattle Attack Aug 2024: A reminder that ransomware can have physical-world impact, the Port of Seattle, a critical US port, was struck by a ransomware attack causing major shipping delays and operational disruption. This attack was part of a broader trend in 2024 of maritime and transportation infrastructure being targeted. The U.S. government responded with an Executive Order extending more cybersecurity requirements to port operators the Coast Guard was given enhanced authority to enforce cyber rules. While not as publicized as pipeline or power grid incidents, port attacks carry big economic implications, a port shutdown can ripple through supply chains. This incident underscored the vulnerability of OT operational technology networks in ports, things like crane systems or freight logistics software to IT-based attacks.

• MOVEit Supply Chain Breach June 2024: A zero-day vulnerability in the MOVEit Transfer file-sharing software was explosively exploited by the Cl0p ransomware group in mid-2024. This became a supply chain breach affecting possibly hundreds of organizations because many companies and government agencies used MOVEit to transfer data including sensitive data like pension info, health data, etc.. Cl0p’s tactic was to mass-exploit the bug to download data from as many MOVEit servers as possible, then extort each victim individually under threat of leaking the stolen data. Victims ranged from the U.S. Department of Energy to banks, universities, and pension funds worldwide. This campaign was a major incident illustrating how a single zero-day can lead to a constellation of breaches. Cl0p reportedly hit over 200 organizations via MOVEit, making tens of millions in aggregate extortion. It pushed cybersecurity agencies to issue emergency directives to patch or disable the software. The MOVEit incident highlighted the time-to-exploit problem: the vulnerability was used by criminals before the vendor even publicly announced it and provided a patch, catching everyone off-guard.
• LAPSUS$ Extortion Spree late 2021–2022, echoing into 2024: The LAPSUS$ group a mostly teenage hacker crew caused turmoil by breaching multiple big tech companies Microsoft, NVIDIA, Okta, etc. via stolen credentials and then extorting them not with ransomware, but by threatening to leak internal data. Several LAPSUS members were arrested in 2022 in the UK, but their tactics, essentially pure extortion without encryption, have inspired others. In 2024, we saw more data-theft-only extortion cases, some ransomware groups even skipping encryption in favor of just stealing and threatening to publish data. For example, the hacking of Rockstar Games in 2022 GTA6 source code leak by a LAPSUS$-style actor set a precedent. In 2024, various corporate leaks on Telegram channels suggested that the pay or we leak model is sometimes carried out by insiders or hackers who didn’t bother with encryption. This trend is scary for companies because even robust backup regimes which thwart ransomware won’t stop extortion if the attacker’s goal is to embarrass or expose.

Each of these incidents carries lessons:

• Massive ransom payments like the $75M case show that some organizations still quietly pay huge sums, fueling the ransomware economy, a point of contention as governments consider banning ransom payments.
• The Bybit hack illustrates the global implications of crypto insecurity and how state actors are leveraging it for funding. It calls for stronger public-private cooperation to secure digital asset platforms.
• The Qilin healthcare attacks spotlight how ransomware can literally endanger lives, raising ethical questions e.g., classifying such attacks as potential violations of international law or even terrorism.
• The proliferation of ransomware groups indicates that takedowns are not enough, we have to make attacks less profitable or more risky for actors which might entail crackdowns on cryptocurrency laundering, since that’s how gangs cash out.
• The supply chain and zero-day exploits MOVEit, etc. emphasize that organizations must patch rapidly and also scrutinize the security of software suppliers. It’s prompting moves toward mandatory SBOMs Software Bill of Materials so companies know if they use a vulnerable component.
• Critical infrastructure hits ports, etc. show the need for specialized OT security and incident response planning in those environments leading countries to impose cyber rules in sectors like transportation and energy e.g., U.S. TSA directives for pipelines, EU NIS2 covering more critical sectors.

In summary, the major campaigns of this era reflect an escalating and evolving threat landscape: criminals going bigger, nation-states getting bolder, and new forms of attack supply chain, pure extortion, deepfake social engineering emerging. They also highlight the interdependence of our systems: a breach in one place can cascade the MOVEit incident being a prime example of cascade via a common software. The hope is that by studying these incidents, defenders can adapt strategies to prevent the next big one.

Emerging Trends in the Malware Landscape

Looking at the data from 2024 and 2025, several emerging trends stand out, indicating where the cyber threat landscape is heading:

1. AI-Powered Attacks and Deepfakes: We are witnessing the dawn of attacks enhanced by artificial intelligence. As mentioned, about 16% of breaches now involve some form of AI use by attackers. This includes AI-written phishing emails that are grammatically perfect and highly tailored making them harder for users to spot. We also see AI being used to generate malware code. There have been proofs of concept of AI models creating polymorphic malware that changes its signature to evade detection. But perhaps most visibly, deepfake technology is being weaponized. In 2024 there were multiple cases of voice deepfakes being used in fraud e.g., criminals cloned a company director’s voice to authorize a fraudulent bank transfer of ~$35M reportedly. About 35% of AI-related breaches in 2025 involved deepfake content voice or video. Targets have included financial departments voice calls from the CEO asking for urgent transfers and even security procedures a deepfake video of a known contractor to bypass a verification in one reported case. This trend is likely to accelerate as AI tools become more accessible. The implication is that trust but verify is more important than ever policies like callback verifications and multi-factor checks for sensitive approvals need to be standard, since seeing or hearing isn’t necessarily believing anymore.

1. Agentic AI Autonomous Hacking Bots: Hand in hand with the above, experts are predicting the rise of fully autonomous cyberattack agents in the near future. This hasn’t been conclusively seen in the wild yet current AI usage still generally requires human direction, but research points to AlphaStrike-like AI that could independently scan for vulnerabilities, develop exploits, and execute attacks at machine speed. If one were to extrapolate from current trends, 2026 and beyond might bring these Agentic AI threats. They could potentially carry out thousands of intrusion attempts simultaneously, far outpacing human operators. While still speculative, nation-state actors are undoubtedly exploring offensive AI. Defensively, this means organizations will need AI-driven defenses simply to keep pace traditional human-monitored SIEMs Security Incident and Event Management systems might be overwhelmed by AI-accelerated attacks. So, one emergent theme is an AI arms race: AI vs AI in cybersecurity.

1. Double/Triple Extortion and Data Destruction: Ransomware groups have iterated their business model. The norm now is double extortion, encrypt data and steal it to threaten leaks. An emerging variant is triple extortion: not only threaten the victim company, but also pressure its partners or customers. For instance, in 2025 the AlphV group, after hitting a company, directly emailed that company’s clients whose data was in the stolen stash, basically saying pressure them to pay or your info gets leaked. This creates multi-dimensional pressure on the primary victim. We’re also seeing some groups incorporate DDoS attacks as an extortion supplement if the victim doesn’t respond, they flood the website as additional pain. Another nasty trend is outright data destruction malware deployed if victims refuse to pay, essentially acting as punitive damage. A few Iranian APT instances e.g., operation where they wiped Israeli company data and at least one Russian ransomware incident saw destructive wipers. These evolutions indicate that attackers are trying all tactics to coerce payment and/or just inflict harm if they have ideological motives.

1. Ransomware Without the Ransom Pure Data Theft Extortion: As noted in the incidents, some threat actors inspired by groups like LAPSUS$ are skipping encryption altogether. This is an interesting trend: in cases where business continuity can be quickly restored via backups, encryption doesn’t give attackers leverage, but stolen sensitive data does. So, we see data extortion where hackers say we stole, we’ll publish if not paid. This can happen via hacking like LAPSUS$ or via insiders selling data. Companies need to treat serious data breaches with the same gravity as a ransomware lockout because the harm from leaks, fines, reputation, IP loss can be equally severe. It’s an emerging trend because it broadens the set of threat actors even those who can’t code sophisticated malware can potentially breach and extort by finding misconfigured cloud storage, for example, and downloading data.

1. Living-off-the-Land & Fileless Malware: Malware is becoming less malware in the traditional sense. Attackers increasingly use what’s already on the system PowerShell, WMI, macros, etc. The stat that PowerShell scripts accounted for 22% of malware detections on Windows is evidence of this. Tools like Cobalt Strike, a legitimate pen-testing tool that is abused, are ubiquitous in intrusions. Also, steganography hiding malicious code in images or other files is on the rise e.g. the Flicker malware hid payloads in PNG images via IDAT chunks to evade scanners. All these living off the land techniques make malware harder to detect by traditional antivirus, since they often don’t drop an obvious EXE file. This trend pushes defenders toward behavior-based detection, zero trust principles internally, and robust endpoint detection & response EDR solutions that can spot odd behavior even if the binary itself isn’t flagged.

1. Attack Democratization via Malware-as-a-Service: The barrier to entry for cybercrime keeps lowering. In 2025, virtually every component of an attack can be rented or purchased: initial access brokers sell network access, exploit kits are for sale, ransomware code is provided as a service, and even customer support hotlines for victims to negotiate are outsourced. There are also phishing-as-a-service platforms now you pay a fee and get a ready dashboard to launch phishing campaigns complete with email templates and hosting for fake login pages. This as-a-service model has led to more amateur criminals launching effective attacks. Not all will hit Fortune 500 companies, many will go after local businesses, clinics, municipalities, etc., resulting in a higher volume of low-to-mid sophistication attacks globally. It also means attribution is muddy because the same toolkit can be used by hundreds of independent actors.

1. Focus on Resilience and Recovery: On the defensive side, one notable trend is a shift in mindset from purely prevention to resilience. The hard truth accepted now is breaches will happen. For example, studies found 83% of organizations have had more than one data breach, so repeat incidents are almost expected. As a result, many organizations especially after being burned by ransomware are significantly investing in things like immutable backups, backups that malware or insiders can’t tamper with, incident response retainers, and business continuity planning. Cyber insurance, while more expensive now, is still being bought to transfer some risk. The metric of success is moving from did we prevent the attack? to how quickly can we bounce back?. The IBM Cost of a Breach report 2025 noted that companies with an incident response team and plan saved on average $2.66M per breach compared to those without. So tabletop exercises and drills are being emphasized by industry regulators as well for instance, financial regulators often ask for cyber incident response testing.

1. Regulation and Legal Changes: In response to the onslaught, governments are enacting or proposing stricter rules. The EU’s NIS2 and DORA regulations mandate higher security standards in critical sectors and finance. The U.S. rolled out a cybersecurity strategy in 2023 that, among other things, calls for software liability meaning in the future, vendors could be held liable for security flaws in their products which would be a game-changer for accountability. Also, sectors like insurance are pushing back some insurers are excluding coverage for nation-state attacks calling them acts of war. Another discussion: the idea of banning ransom payments to remove the financial incentive. No major country has done it yet, but extortion payments to sanctioned entities like many ransomware gangs linked to Russia are technically illegal already in the U.S. and Europe forcing companies into a quandary. These evolving legal frameworks will shape how organizations approach cybersecurity e.g., could face fines not just for breaches but for weak security practices to begin with.

In essence, the emerging trends show an escalation both in attacker innovation and defensive adaptation. Attackers leverage new tech AI, automation, new tactics, extortion sans encryption, triple extortion, and the crimeware ecosystem is maturing with service models. Defenders are responding by focusing on fundamentals, backup, patching, adopting new tech AI for defense, and governments are trying to tilt the playing field through policy though that’s often slower. The race is ongoing, and these trends will likely continue into 2026 and beyond, making cybersecurity a top organizational risk to manage.

What These Statistics Mean for You

Sifting through all these statistics and trends, a natural question arises: what do they mean in practical terms? For organizations and individuals, the data paints a clear picture that cybersecurity can’t be taken lightly or treated as just an IT issue. Here are a few distilled insights and implications from the statistics:

• Breaches Are Pervasive and Costly Plan Accordingly: The odds of a breach or malware incident are high the question is when, not if. With average breach costs in the millions and rising for certain regions/sectors, organizations must view strong cybersecurity as essential risk management, akin to fire insurance or legal compliance. The data suggests investing in incident response preparedness is crucial for those who had IR plans and security automation saved significant money and time in breaches. So, one takeaway is to develop and drill an incident response plan now. Know how you’d handle a ransomware event: who to call, how to restore systems, whether to involve law enforcement, etc. The faster and more coordinated your response, the less the damage both financially and reputation-wise.

• Big Game Targets Need Extra Armor: If your organization holds a lot of sensitive data PII, health records or could be considered a big fish in terms of revenue, assume that sophisticated cybercriminal cartels have you on their radar. The stats show these actors are focusing efforts on high-value targets like U.S. firms, large healthcare networks, and critical infra because the payoffs are larger. This means such organizations should go beyond basic compliance e.g., conduct regular penetration testing and red-team exercises to find weaknesses before attackers do. They should also consider threat intelligence monitoring to see if their data or employee creds show up for sale and possibly proactive threat hunting within their networks for stealthy intrusions. Essentially, if you're a big game, act like you’re constantly being hunted for your operational security.

• Ransomware: Preparation and Tough Calls: Ransomware remains the existential cyber threat to operations. The stats on backup attacks 95% of healthcare incidents saw backups targeted mean your backup strategy has to be airtight offline or immutable backups, and testing those backups. Also, organizations should decide ahead of time their stance on paying ransoms. It’s a contentious issue, but the decision will come under duress if made at the moment. Many experts advise not to pay to avoid funding criminals and because there’s no guarantee, but the reality is many do pay when lives or critical business are on the line. Whatever your stance, involve legal and executive leadership in that discussion early. And consider cyber insurance that could cover some ransom costs though insurers now scrutinize whether you’ve taken proper precautions they examine things like are you patching, using MFA, etc.. The rising ransom demands also mean even insured, you might hit coverage caps. It’s an ugly situation, but being psychologically and procedurally prepared for a ransomware scenario can save precious time.

• Human Factor is Paramount: Given phishing is the top vector and stolen credentials are rife, human behavior is a crucial variable. The stats about AI making phishing 4,000% more frequent and how many breaches involve human error should spur organizations to continually train and test their employees. This doesn’t mean one annual training video, it means ongoing security awareness programs with simulated phishing exercises, real-time feedback, and a culture where people aren’t shamed for reporting clicks but are taught to be vigilant. Empower your staff to be a defensive asset e.g., encourage reporting of suspicious emails and make that reporting easy with one-click buttons. And implement technical controls knowing humans will slip up: have robust email filtering with phishing protection that checks links and attachments in a sandbox, implement multi-factor authentication widely so a stolen password alone isn’t enough, and consider password managers to help users avoid reuse and choose strong passwords. In short, harden the human layer, because attackers are explicitly targeting it.

• Cyber Hygiene and Patching Old Advice, New Urgency: The data on exploits and unpatched systems being a major cause with time-to-exploit now in hours underscores that basic cyber hygiene is still often lacking and still a top cause of breaches. Patching your systems may sound mundane, but it’s critical. Organizations should invest in vulnerability management, know what asset inventory you have, know what vulnerabilities those assets have continuous scanning, and have a risk-based approach to patch quickly where it matters like internet-facing systems. The idea of continuous vulnerability discovery is key, you can’t secure what you don’t know you have, so attack surface visibility is foundational. Tools like attack surface management platforms can help identify forgotten exposed assets. Network segmentation also comes in: assume something will get in, but if you’ve segmented your network, you can prevent an exploit in say a web server from leading straight to your crown jewels in the database.

• Third-Party Risk Trust But Verify: The supply chain is the Achilles’ heel for many. The stat that supply chain compromises were the #2 vector and nearly as costly as phishing is a wake-up call. Companies must start treating vendors and partners as extensions of their environment in terms of security scrutiny. This means conduct due diligence: ask vendors about their security. Do they follow SOC 2 or ISO27001? Do they have a breach history? What’s their patch policy?. Include security requirements in contracts. Also, limit third-party access use least privilege if a vendor only needs to access one application, don’t give them network-wide VPN. And monitors that access set up alerts for unusual third-party activity. The concept of zero trust applies here: just because it’s a trusted vendor doesn’t mean you should blindly trust their connection. If feasible, use brokered connections where you maintain control e.g., have data go through an API gateway you monitor rather than giving direct DB access. Essentially, tighten the digital supply chain similarly to how manufacturers oversee physical supply quality.

• Geopolitical Awareness: Depending on your region or sector, know thy enemy. For example, if you operate in the energy sector, be aware that nation-state APTs like certain groups from Russia or Iran might specifically target you for sabotage or espionage. That might prompt you to invest in specialized OT network monitoring and segregate IT from OT. If you’re a tech company with valuable IP, consider threats from industrial espionage, Chinese APTs seeking source code etc. and implement insider threat programs and perhaps data loss prevention DLP tools. If you’re in a country that’s currently in a geopolitical conflict even indirectly, like Poland in the context of the Ukraine war, ramp up defenses and possibly collaborate with government cyber defense if available. The key is to align your security focus with who is likely to attack you: cybercriminals for money, or state actors for data disruption. Often it’s both, so cover the basics first which actually stops many state actor techniques too.

• Invest in Detection and Response Not Just Prevention: The statistics indicate many breaches went undetected for an average of ~6–7 months detection time earlier, now improving to ~181 days to detect. That’s still a long time an attacker can lurk. It reinforces that intrusion detection is vital to assume breach and hunt for signs. Implement an EDR or XDR solution that can flag suspicious patterns like a PowerShell spawning from an Office document, which is fishy in most environments. Set up logging and SIEM correlations for key events like new user account creations, privilege escalations, large data transfers. And crucially, have a plan to respond when an alert fires at 2 AM an on-call team or an outsourced Managed Detection and Response service if you can’t do it in-house. The goal is to catch incidents when they’re small e.g., catch that one server communicating with a known malware C2 address, investigate, and wipe out the malware before it spreads. The fact that companies with AI detection saved $1.9M suggests those who detected faster limited the damage. It’s like spotting and extinguishing a small fire in the kitchen versus the whole house burning down.

In essence, these stats mean cybersecurity needs to be a continuous, organization-wide effort. It’s not a one-time project or a checklist for compliance. The threats adapt, so defenses must adapt too. It also means that security is not solely the domain of the IT security team, leadership must be engaged to allocate budget and foster a security culture, employees at all levels must be educated to not fall for scams, and even customers and partners need awareness that some breaches start with customer account takeover, etc.. Cyber resilience should be baked into business strategy now from product design building secure software and hardware to daily operations.

Finally, for individuals, these stats mean we too have to remain vigilant: use strong, unique passwords and a password manager, enable 2FA on everything possible, be skeptical of unsolicited messages, verify independently if your bank emails you, etc., keep software up to date. Many attacks that hit companies can start by targeting an individual, phishing an employee, infecting a personal device that then connects to work, etc.. So good cyber hygiene at a personal level contributes to the overall safety of the organizations we work for and the society we live in.

In summary, the statistics we’ve dissected are not just numbers, they tell a story of a threat landscape that is aggressive and ever-changing, but also provide clues on how best to defend. By learning from the data, we can prioritize actions that make the most difference in reducing risk.

Best Practices Informed by the Data

The trends and statistics from 2024–2025 highlight several best practices that organizations should adopt to bolster their cybersecurity. Here are practical, data-driven recommendations:

1. Implement Defense in Depth: No single solution or control is foolproof. Given that breaches often involve multiple failure points e.g., a phish, then an unpatched privilege escalation, etc., layering security is key. Use a combination of network security, endpoint protection, and identity security. For instance, deploy modern EDR on all endpoints to catch malicious behavior, have strong email security gateways to filter phishing, use web application firewalls on external apps, and enforce network segmentation so that if one segment is breached, it doesn’t grant access to everything. The data shows how multiple stages are involved in attacks, so try to make attackers trip up at one of those stages.

1. Adopt a Zero Trust Approach: In light of insider threats, stolen credentials, and supply chain breaches, assume no user or system is inherently trustworthy just because it’s inside your network. Zero Trust means always verify and enforce least privilege. Concretely: require re-authentication and MFA for sensitive actions, segment access so employees only reach what they absolutely need and use tools to easily grant and revoke access as roles change, and continuously monitor for abnormal behavior if an authenticated user starts downloading gigabytes of data at 3am, that’s a red flag. This strategy would mitigate many breach scenarios e.g., if a vendor’s account is compromised, Zero Trust network rules might limit that account from accessing critical data, containing the damage. As the mantra goes, never trust, always verify. Tools like identity analytics to baseline normal user access patterns and micro-segmentation in networks support this.

1. Continuous Attack Surface Management: The stats on how many attacks come through known vulnerabilities and misconfigurations imply organizations need continuous vigilance over their IT assets. Utilize attack surface management services or platforms to automatically discover and inventory all your internet-facing assets you might be surprised by forgotten cloud servers or old websites. These services can help maintain broader attack surface visibility and flag when something pops up that shouldn't be like a developer accidentally exposing a database. Regularly scan for vulnerabilities both external and internal scans. Also, keep software inventories to know if you’re affected by newly disclosed CVEs. For example, when Log4Shell came out, companies that had a good SBOM/inventory could quickly find all instances of Log4j in their environment, others scrambled for weeks. Essentially, treat unpatched systems and unknown systems as ticking time bombs find and fix them proactively.

1. Patch Critical Vulnerabilities Fast: We can’t patch everything immediately, but we must patch the most dangerous things quickly. Based on the exploit trends, prioritize patching of internet-facing systems web servers, VPN appliances, etc., known exploited vulnerabilities subscribe to CISA’s KEV catalog which lists actively exploited CVEs, and high-severity bugs in widely-used products like Windows, browsers, Office. Develop a process to evaluate patches on at least a weekly cycle. Many orgs now do Patch Tuesday deployments in the same week for critical issues, rather than waiting for monthly cycles. Where patching isn’t immediately possible e.g., operations can’t downtime a system, look for mitigations: can you disable the vulnerable service temporarily, or implement a virtual patch via a web application firewall rule or an IPS signature? The cost of delay is seen in stats like exploits happening in hours you want to shrink your window of exposure as much as feasible. Also, don’t forget to patch client software. An employee's outdated PDF reader or browser plug-in can be a foothold via a malicious email attachment or site.

1. Strengthen Authentication Security: With credential theft so rampant, improving how users authenticate is vital. Enable multi-factor authentication MFA everywhere you can, especially for email, VPNs, privileged accounts, and remote access tools. According to Microsoft, MFA can block 99% of automated account takeover attacks. Yes, attackers have some MFA bypass tricks now like AiTM phishing, but it still massively reduces risk for the bulk of threats. Also consider phishing-resistant MFA methods for highly privileged accounts such as FIDO2 security keys or certificate-based auth, which are much harder to phish than SMS or OTP codes. Additionally, implement password managers and policies against password reuse with monitoring via services that check if corporate emails appear in breach credential dumps. The goal is to make it significantly harder for attackers to use stolen credentials. On privileged accounts, consider adding even more controls: things like just-in-time admin access an admin must request elevated access which expires after a short time and monitoring/admin approval for critical changes. The harder you make credential abuse, the more likely attackers will have to make noise using exploits or malware, which you have a better chance of catching.

1. Elevate Security Awareness Training: Humans being the weakest link means we should invest in making that link stronger. Modern security awareness training is not about one annual boring slideshow, it’s about continuous engagement. Use simulated phishing campaigns regularly to test employees when they click, use it as a coaching opportunity. Reward departments with good phishing report rates or long streaks of no one falling for simulations. Instill the mindset of stop and think e.g., encourage people to hover on links to check URLs, to verify unusual requests via a second channel if the CEO emails you urgently for money, maybe call them to confirm. Extend awareness to new areas too for example, deepfakes: employees should be made aware that voice or video isn’t guaranteed authentic and unusual requests via those media should be verified. Also, train staff on what to do after a potential incident e.g., if someone realizes I think I just entered my password on a fake site, they should know to report immediately without fear. Quick reporting can prevent one cred phish from becoming a full breach, the account can be reset before attackers use it. In summary, cultivate a security-first culture, make cybersecurity a shared responsibility and ensure everyone knows basic do’s and don’ts.

1. Backup, Test, and Prepare for Ransomware: Given how catastrophic ransomware can be, every organization should operate under the assumption they might be hit and prepare accordingly. This means having daily offline backups of critical data at minimum. Use the 3-2-1 rule: 3 copies of data, on 2 different media, 1 offsite offline. But equally important, test those backups frequently. Many companies discovered too late their backups weren’t working or were incomplete. Practice restoration from backups in drills to see how long it takes and to document any gotchas. Additionally, maintain some spare hardware or cloud standby environment if your primary systems are bricked by ransomware, so you can recover faster. Develop and practice a ransomware playbook: decide who makes the call on paying/not paying, ensure you have contact info for law enforcement and cyber insurance handy, and so on. Consider segmenting network access for backups and should be on a separate credential and network domain, so ransomware that compromises the main network can’t easily spread to backup servers. Some organizations are exploring immutable storage or WORM write once, read many storage for backups to defend against attackers trying to encrypt or delete backups. If you can show that a ransomware attack would be a mere inconvenience because you can restore systems in, say, 1 day with minimal data loss, you remove the attackers’ leverage significantly.

1. Leverage Threat Intelligence and Collaboration: Stay informed about the latest threats targeting your industry or region. Subscribe to threat intel feeds many free from government CSIRTs or industry groups. For example, knowing that a certain ransomware group is exploiting a particular SonicWall firewall CVE, you could proactively hunt if you have that device, rather than waiting for compromise. Many industries have sharing groups like ISACs Information Sharing and Analysis Centers where companies anonymously share indicators of attacks they’ve seen. Participating can give early warnings. Collaboration extends to law enforcement and cultivates relationships with agencies like the FBI cyber task force or local cyber police units. They often can provide decryption tools if a known ransomware gang’s keys were recovered, or at least guidance. And if you do get hit, reporting it helps the broader fight.

1. Use Professional Security Services When Needed: Not every organization can build deep cybersecurity expertise in-house, especially small and mid-sized businesses. Given the complexity of threats, it’s wise to bring in experts where feasible. This could mean arranging for periodic penetration testing engagements to find your weaknesses. An external ethical hacker perspective often catches things internal teams miss e.g., web application security testing for your websites and APIs, or cloud penetration testing programs to assess your cloud environments. Pen-tests should be done at least annually or after major changes. For ongoing support, consider continuous penetration testing services or managed detection services, where a provider constantly monitors your attack surface and alerts you to new issues that aligns with the trend of PTaaS Penetration Testing as a Service which many are adopting for continuous coverage. By using such services, you get specialized skills on tap and can often react faster to threats. Given how rapidly new vulnerabilities and exploits appear, the continuous approach is gaining favor over once-a-year audits.

1. Plan for the Worst, Hope for the Best: Ultimately, the best practice is to integrate cyber risk into business risk planning. Boards and executives should understand cyber threats as existential risks the way they view market risks or regulatory risks. Conduct business impact analyses for cyber scenarios: what if our customer data is hacked? What if our plant control systems are ransomwared? Then plan mitigations and responses for those scenarios. Cybersecurity should be on the agenda at the highest levels, not buried in IT. From the stats, one can glean that those who invest smartly in security tend to have less costly breaches. It’s not about spending blindly, it’s about addressing the high-risk areas systematically. With the era of agentic AI and more automated attacks on the horizon, being proactive and adaptive is the only viable approach.

In summary, the best practices boil down to prevention, detection, and resilience:

• Prevention through strong access controls, updated systems, and user awareness.
• Detection through monitoring, threat hunting, and testing.
• Resilience through backups, response plans, and practicing recovery.

The data from 2024–25 validates these practices. Organizations that followed them fared better with shorter incident durations, lower costs. Those that didn’t often became part of next year’s breach statistics.

By taking these lessons to heart and acting on them, an organization can dramatically lower its cyber risk profile not to zero, but to a level where it can manage and survive incidents without catastrophic fallout. In a threat landscape as turbulent as today’s, that level of preparedness can make the difference between a minor security event and a headline-grabbing disaster.

FAQs

• How many malware attacks occur per day or year globally?

Precise numbers are hard to pin down, but estimates suggest that security systems detect around 560,000 new malware samples every day on average. Annual malware infections globally were estimated around 6.2 billion for 2024 and projected ~6.5 billion for 2025. In terms of cyberattacks in general, one report noted an average of 1,163 attacks per organization per week worldwide in 2024, a figure that was rising year-over-year. So, in short, millions of attacks and malware events are happening globally each year. It's a continuous onslaught.

• What is the average cost of a data breach in 2025?

The average cost of a data breach in 2025 is about $4.44 million. This figure comes from IBM’s annual study and represents a slight decrease from the all-time high of $4.88M in 2024. However, this is a global average. In the United States, the average breach cost was much higher, at $10.22 million reflecting the more severe financial impact breaches have on U.S. companies due to factors like legal costs and higher customer churn. Different industries also have different averages, healthcare breaches top $7M on average. It’s worth noting that these costs include everything: detection, response, downtime, lost business, fines, etc.

• Which industry is most affected by cyberattacks currently?

In 2024, healthcare became the most breached industry, accounting for roughly 23% of reported data breaches. It surpassed the finance sector in number of incidents for the first time. Healthcare also consistently has the highest breach costs averaging $7M-$9M. Ransomware has hit healthcare especially hard, about 67% of healthcare orgs were attacked in a year. That said, other industries are heavily targeted too: financial services banks, etc. remain a prime target for both cybercriminals and nation-state hackers, the tech sector sees a lot of intellectual property and supply-chain attacks, and critical infrastructure energy, transportation faces growing threats as well, often from state-sponsored actors. But if one had to pick, healthcare is in a state of cyber crisis at the moment.

• How has ransomware evolved in 2025 compared to previous years?

Ransomware in 2025 is more professionalized and ruthless. Key evolutions:

• The vast majority of attacks now involve data theft, double extortion in addition to encryption. Many also add pressure with triple extortion attacking victims’ clients or DDoS-ing them.
• Ransom demands and payments have skyrocketed e.g., the median payment hit $1.5M in 2024, and multi-million dollar demands are common.
• Fewer victims are paying overall, but those who do pay a lot more.
• Ransomware gangs now operate like SaaS businesses with affiliate programs, leading to more groups rebranded or a new 30% YoY increase in active groups.
• Tactically, they’ve adopted more living off the land techniques to evade detection and often spend time doing network discovery and backup deletion before deploying the ransomware to maximize impact.

In essence, ransomware gangs have upped both their technological game and their business model making them more dangerous but also somewhat predictable in their double-extortion approach.

• Are Windows and Android really targeted more than Apple devices?

Yes, by a large margin. The stats show Windows and Android see far more malware activity than macOS or iOS:

• In 2025, about 87% of malware detections were on Windows vs 13% on macOS. Windows’ larger market share especially in business and open ecosystem ability to run any exe contribute to that disparity. Mac malware is rising, but still much less common.
• For mobile, Android devices are roughly 50 times more likely to be compromised than iOS devices. Android’s openness to third-party app stores, ability to sideload apps, and many manufacturers with varying update practices makes it more susceptible. iOS’s walled-garden approach and stricter app review process keep mass malware at bay most iOS threats are targeted spyware or social engineering like smishing.

That said, no platform is completely immune. Mac and iOS have had notable threats e.g., the Pegasus spyware on iPhones, or the Atomic Stealer on Mac, but those tend to be fewer and often targeted. In contrast, malware authors churn out new Windows trojans and Android nasties daily by the thousands because that’s where the audience is.

• What role does AI play in recent cyberattacks?

AI is playing an increasing role on both offense and defense. Offensively, attackers use AI primarily to enhance social engineering for example, generating highly convincing phishing emails or deepfake audio/video for impersonation. According to reports, 16% of breaches in 2025 involved AI in some capacity like automating aspects of the attack. Deepfake usage in attacks for voice phishing vishing or fake videos in fraud schemes has gone up an estimated 35% of AI-related breaches including deepfakes. There are also AI tools being developed to help write malware or find vulnerabilities, though those are less publicly documented. On the defensive side, AI/ML is used in many security products to detect anomalies or known malicious patterns faster. Companies with heavy AI-based security saw significant improvement in breach response saving nearly $1.9M in costs on average. In summary, AI is kind of a force multiplier making phishing and fraud more believable at scale, but also helping defenders sort through alerts and respond faster. We expect the cat-and-mouse with AI to intensify, possibly leading to partially or fully autonomous attacks in the future, which is a concerning prospect.

• How can an organization protect itself given these statistics?

By building a robust, layered cybersecurity program. Key steps include:

• Educating employees about phishing and social engineering since human error is a leading cause.
• Enforcing strong authentication, unique passwords, multi-factor auth everywhere possible.
• Keeping systems updated patch critical vulnerabilities quickly to cut off easy paths for attackers.
• Backups and incident response planning assume a breach will happen, have backups offline and a practiced plan to restore and respond. This is crucial for ransomware.
• Network segmentation and zero trust limit the access any one account or system has, so a breach is contained and doesn’t domino through your network.
• Security monitoring deploy tools to detect intrusions EDR, network anomaly detection and have a team or service to respond when something is detected.
• Third-party risk management vet and monitor partners who connect to your systems or handle your data.
• Possibly use specialized services for additional help, like periodic penetration testing services to find weaknesses and continuous penetration testing or managed detection services to stay on top of emerging threats in real-time.
• And importantly, executive support and cyber insurance as financial safety nets.

Make sure leadership treats cybersecurity as a business risk and not just an IT issue.The precise mix will vary by organization size and industry, but the above are core pillars. Essentially, the stats tell us to cover the basics really well. Many breaches are preventable by good hygiene and be ready for the advanced threats with strong response and depth of defenses.

• Is paying the ransom when hit by ransomware a viable solution?

It’s a contentious issue. Many law enforcement agencies and experts advise not to pay ransoms, because payment fuels the ransomware business and there’s no guarantee you’ll get your data back or that the criminals won’t leak/sell it anyway. The statistics show about 16% of victims paid in 2024 up from ~7% in 2023, and in some sectors like healthcare up to 53% admitted paying. So clearly, many organizations do pay, often out of desperation to restore operations or prevent sensitive leaks. Viability-wise: sometimes paying does lead to decryption and no public leak, criminals have a reputation incentive to uphold deals usually, but it’s no guarantee some victims who paid were still extorted again or had data dumped. Another factor: paying might be illegal if the ransomware gang is under sanctions e.g., many Russian gangs are. If you involve law enforcement, they typically won’t facilitate payment unless life/safety is at risk like a hospital scenario. Organizations should weigh: do we have reliable backups? Can we restore ourselves quickly? What’s the damage if data leaks? More are leaning toward not paying if they can recover on their own. But if an organization is crippled and has no other options, they may decide to pay as a business decision. The best scenario is not to be in that position by preparing well backups, etc., so the question becomes moot. In summary: paying can sometimes solve the immediate issue but carries long-term costs, encourages more attacks, could mark you as a soft target for other gangs, and has moral/legal implications. It’s truly a last resort and even then a risky bet.

• How soon do companies detect breaches on average, and can faster detection really save money?

On average in 2025, companies took about ~181 days to identify a breach and 241 days to fully contain it. That’s an improvement from previous years which were ~207 and 277 days respectively, but it’s still many months of dwell time. Faster detection absolutely correlates with lower cost. IBM data showed companies that detected and contained breaches in under 200 days saved $1.12M compared to those that took longer. Moreover, companies with security AI and automation which often improves detection speed saved $1.9M as noted. So speed is of the essence the earlier you catch an intruder, the less chance they have to steal large amounts of data or encrypt everything. For example, stopping a ransomware attack while it’s still on one or two machines prevents a business-wide outage. Or detecting a data breach within days might mean you can revoke stolen credentials and limit data exfiltration before terabytes are gone. The trend toward continuous monitoring, 24/7 SOCs, and AI-driven detection is in direct response to this need for speed. Essentially, every minute of attacker dwell time is more opportunity for them to cause damage, so reducing that dwell time through better detection tools and processes is one of the best cost-saving moves in security.

The cybersecurity statistics and trends from 2024–2025 present a clear message: while we are making incremental progress in some areas with slightly lower average breach costs globally, improved detection times, the overall threat environment continues to intensify in sophistication and stakes. Cybercrime has truly industrialized. We have sprawling ransomware cartels, a vibrant underground economy selling access and exploits, and nation-state actors blurring the lines by engaging in financially motivated hacks alongside espionage.

Malware remains a central weapon in this conflict, whether it’s ransomware used for multi-million dollar extortion, stealthy infostealers enabling supply chain breaches, or state-deployed destructive wipers. The data shows attackers are exploiting any weakness: human gullibility, unpatched software, third-party trust, or emerging tech like AI. No organization or region is completely safe, the threats are global and target everything from critical infrastructure to small businesses and personal devices.

Yet, within these sobering statistics lies guidance. We know, for instance, that multi-factor authentication, security awareness, and prompt patching can thwart a huge portion of attacks. The very fact that so many breaches start with stolen credentials or known vulnerabilities is evidence that doing the basics right would dramatically improve security postures. We also see that organizations which invested in resilience, incident response, backups, and security AI not only contained incidents faster but saved millions in breach costs. In short, knowledge of these trends arms us with the ability to prioritize defenses where they matter most.

One key takeaway from this analysis is the importance of a holistic, proactive approach to cybersecurity. It’s not enough to put up a firewall or deploy an antivirus and call it a day. The threats can come via your people so train them, via your technology so harden and update it, via your partners so verify and limit their access, or via novel tactics so stay informed and adaptive. Organizations must embed security into every layer of operations from software development secure coding, testing before deployment to employee culture empower everyone to be a cyber defender to executive strategy treat cyber risk on par with financial and operational risk.

Another takeaway is the growing need for collaboration and intelligence sharing. The attackers certainly share tools and knowledge, defenders must do the same. Industry consortiums, public-private partnerships, and global cooperation through law enforcement are increasingly vital. When one company suffers an attack and learns of a new tactic, spreading that intel can prevent others from falling victim. The statistics about widespread use of certain exploits or techniques indicate many attacks could be preempted if warnings are heeded collectively.

Looking ahead, the horizon promises both challenge and opportunity. The specter of autonomous AI-driven attacks looms, which could drastically speed up and scale cyberattacks. At the same time, advancements in defensive AI, zero trust architectures, and more secure-by-design technologies offer hope that we can level the playing field. The concept of digital resilience will likely become the new benchmark of success not just preventing attacks, but operating through them and bouncing back with minimal damage. In 2025, we saw the beginnings of that mindset shift, with more focus on continuity and recovery.

In conclusion, the malware statistics for 2025 tell a story of an ever-evolving battle. Cyber adversaries are inventive, persistent, and often well-funded. But organizations are not powerless, the data illuminates where our defenses must improve and what strategies are paying off. By learning from this comprehensive analysis the mistakes made, the strategies that worked, and the trends that are forming businesses and institutions worldwide can adapt and strengthen their cybersecurity posture.

Cybersecurity is often described as a journey, not a destination. The years 2024–2025 have been a pivotal stretch in that journey, teaching us hard lessons at times, but also demonstrating that with the right investments and mindset, we can manage cyber risk effectively. The road ahead will no doubt bring new threats from AI bots to quantum computing challenges, but armed with the insights from current statistics and a commitment to best practices, organizations can navigate the future with greater confidence and control. In an era where digital threats are ubiquitous, those who are prepared, agile, and resilient will stand the best chance of not just surviving, but thriving securely in the digital age.

About the Author

Mohammed Khalil is a Cybersecurity Architect at DeepStrike Specializing in advanced penetration testing and offensive security operations, he holds certifications including CISSP, OSCP, and OSWE. Mohammed has led numerous red team engagements for Fortune 500 companies, focusing on cloud security, application vulnerabilities, and adversary emulation. His work involves dissecting complex attack chains and developing resilient defense strategies for clients in the finance, healthcare, and technology sectors.