Ransomware attacks statistics show an attack landscape that has evolved from nuisance attacks to strategic business disruption. Modern attackers don’t just encrypt files. They steal your data and threaten to sell it or publish it online, extorting victims multiple times.

Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) has democratized cybercrime by allowing novice attackers to purchase ready-made ransomware. Thousands of inexperienced cybercriminals now launch attacks with prepackaged tools.

Ransomware statistics reveal critical insights into the evolving threat landscape. Let’s get into the key trends in frequency, costs, and time to impact to help you understand the growing risks.

Increased frequency

The costs when hit by ransomware are high. IBM's 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report puts the average cost of a ransomware incident at $4.4 million—over 38 times more than the average ransom demand of $115,000 itself.  Despite these massive recovery costs, 64% of breach victims refused to pay ransoms in 2025.

Time to impact

It now takes cybercriminals only hours (versus days) to go from initial infiltration to full network encryption. Many ransomware statistics expect this trend to accelerate, with some ransomware operators achieving full domain encryption in under four hours.

Increased costs

The overall cost of recovery from a ransomware attack is astronomical. It’s not just the ransom that you have to worry about, but the stress of the attack, the costs associated with downtime, lost productivity, incident response, third-party services like forensics and legal, and reputational harm.

Smaller businesses have become ransomware target number one. As we said earlier, ransomware accounted for 88% of SMB breaches. 

Cybercriminals prioritize SMBs because they typically have weaker security controls, lack dedicated security teams, and face harder recoveries. While a $50,000 ransom might not seem a lot to a Fortune 500 company, it represents a month's revenue for a 30-employee manufacturer. Small business ransomware statistics paint an even more concerning picture when you consider the long-term survival rates.

While SMB ransomware stats vary, the average downtime following a ransomware attack is 24 days. That's more than three weeks where you can't access your accounting software, take new orders, or protect customer data. Every minute costs you money and customers,

Double extortion (stealing data before encrypting it) is now standard in ransomware attacks. Double extortion means threat actors say they will leak or sell sensitive stolen data if you don’t pay a ransom on top of encryption.

Humans remain the weakest link. Verizon found that the human element, including phishing and social engineering, contributed to 68% of breaches. Cybercriminals have become very good at making fake emails look real to our eyes and our email filters.

Humans are also fast. Verizon’s 2024 Data Breach Investigations Report found users click phishing links in just 21 seconds, then enter credentials 28 seconds later. This means falling victim in under 60 seconds total. 

Windows may be the most common operating system for ransomware to infect, but there are Linux and macOS variants being developed by threat actors. We’ve seen threats like the Peerblight Linux backdoor compromise Linux servers via discrete exploits. Ransomware is targeting ESXi hypervisors and cloud services.

In addition, attackers are targeting managed service providers (MSPs) and software vendors to attack their customers.

Many companies operate under the false assumption that their data will be safe from ransomware as long as they have a good backup solution. While the 3/2/1 backup rule (3 copies, 2 different media, 1 offsite) is a great start, backups aren't a silver bullet anymore. 

Ransomware groups actively target backup infrastructure. If an attacker can reach your backups, the chances of recovery from an attack decrease significantly.

Instead, focus on early detection. The earlier you detect attacks before encryption, the more time you have to respond. This means identifying reconnaissance activities, lateral movement, and anomalous user behavior.