Cybersecurity Statistics

Cybersecurity statistics

51% of ransomware victims paid a ransom demand.

Publisher	Illumio & Ponemon Institute
Report	The Global Cost of Ransomware Study
Published	1 January 2025

Published by Illumio & Ponemon Institute in The Global Cost of Ransomware Study , 1 January 2025. The figure is taken from the report as published; the full methodology is in the source.

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Related statistics

Motivations for paying a ransom included: Not wanting data leaked (47%), inability to afford downtime (47%), having cyber insurance (41%), and all of the above (40%).

Illumio & Ponemon Institute, 01/01/2025

58% of organisations hit by ransomware in 2024 were forced to shut down operations to recover. This is an increase from 45% in 2021.

Illumio & Ponemon Institute, 01/01/2025

Data exfiltration was the most common tactic used by ransomware groups to exert pressure (47%), followed by DDoS attacks (45%), data encryption (43%), and communicating with stakeholders/customers (34%).

Illumio & Ponemon Institute, 01/01/2025

Only 28% of respondents said their organisations informed law enforcement when they were hit by ransomware.

Illumio & Ponemon Institute, 01/01/2025

The proportion of respondents reporting a significant revenue loss as a result of a ransomware attack nearly doubled from 22% in 2021 to 40% in 2024.

Illumio & Ponemon Institute, 01/01/2025

Phishing was the most common way of delivering ransomware, accounting for 45% of incidents. This is a slight fall compared to 2021, when phishing was used in 48% of ransomware attacks. The next most common methods were remote desktop protocol (RDP) compromises (32%) and exploiting software vulnerabilities (19%).

Illumio & Ponemon Institute, 01/01/2025

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