Sophos has released its sixth annual State of Ransomware report, a vendor-agnostic survey of IT and cybersecurity leaders across 17 countries that studies the impact of ransomware attacks on businesses. This year’s survey found that nearly 50 per cent of companies paid the ransom to get their data back – the second highest rate of ransom payment for ransom demands in six years.
Despite the high percentage of companies that paid the ransom, over half – 53 per cent – paid less than the original demand. In 71 per cent of cases where the companies paid less, they did so through negotiation – either through their own negotiations or with help from a third party. In fact, while the median ransom demand dropped by a third between 2024 and 2025, the median ransom payment dropped by 50 per cent, illustrating how companies are becoming more successful at minimising the impact of ransomware.
Overall, the median ransom payment was one million dollars, although the initial demand varied significantly depending on organisation size and revenue. The median ransom demand for companies with over US$1 billion in revenue was five million dollars, while organisations with $250 million revenue or less, saw median ransom demands of less than US$350,000.
For the third year in a row, exploited vulnerabilities were the number one technical root cause of attacks, while 40 per cent of ransomware victims said adversaries took advantage of a security gap that they were not aware of – highlighting organisations’ ongoing struggle to see and secure their attack surface. Overall, 63 per cent of organisations said resourcing issues were a factor in them falling victim to the attack, with lack of expertise named as the top operational cause in organisations with more than 3,000 people and lack of people/capacity most frequently cited by those with 251-500 employees.
“For many organisations, the chance of being compromised by ransomware actors is just a part of doing business in 2025. The good news is that, thanks to this increased awareness, many companies are arming themselves with resources to limit damage. This includes hiring incident responders who can not only lower ransom payments but also speed up recovery and even stop attacks in progress,” says Chester Wisniewski, director, field CISO, Sophos.
“Of course, ransomware can still be ‘cured’ by tackling the root causes of attacks: exploited vulnerabilities, lack of visibility into the attack surface, and too few resources. We’re seeing more companies recognise they need help and moving to managed detection and response (MDR) services for defence. MDR coupled with proactive security strategies, such as multifactor authentication and patching, can go a long way in preventing ransomware from the start.”
Additional Key Findings from the State of Ransomware 2025 Report:
- More Companies are Stopping Attacks in Progress: 44 per cent of companies were able to stop the ransomware attack before data was encrypted – a six-year high. Data encryption was also at a six-year low with only half of companies having their data encrypted.
- Backup Use is Down: Only 54 per cent of companies used backups to restore their data – the lowest percentage in six years.
- Silver Lining: Ransomware Payments and Recovery Costs are on the Decline: The average cost of recovery dropped from US$2.73 million in 2024, to US$1.53 million in 2025. While ransom payments are high, they declined by 50 per cent from US$2 million in 2024 to US$1 million in 2025.
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