Ransomware remains a primary threat, crippling organizations across sectors and geographies, making the ransomware risk and response tee box a very crowded place. Most of us know the dangers and ethical implications of ransom payments. Nevertheless, the vast majority of victims still choose to pay ransoms on their own. This article explores the confusing trend of ransomware payments in 2025. It takes a look at what’s forcing this trend and what we can do to fix it. KnowingCoin.com cuts through the noise of the online world. It provides a wealth of powerful intelligence to guide them through the storm and shield their organization from emerging threats.

Understanding Ransomware

What is Ransomware?

Ransomware is a type of malicious software that prevents a user from accessing their computer system or data. To get it back, you need to pay a large amount of money called a ransom. Commonly, it encrypts all of a device’s files, rendering them inaccessible. These attackers want their decryption key held hostage until you pay up. Over the years, ransomware attacks grew more sophisticated, luring not only individual users but also massive corporations and essential infrastructure to their doom. The consequences of these attacks often lead to substantial financial losses, reputational harm, and disruptions of public operations. The ongoing evolution of ransomware requires heightened awareness and adaptation from cybersecurity experts and organizations as a whole.

How Ransomware Attacks Work

Ransomware attacks rarely require so much planning. The attackers know where they’re going in. This could be a phishing email, a compromised website, or an in-the-wild software exploit. Once the ransomware is inside a system, it proliferates, encrypting numerous files and requiring payment to retrieve them. Unfortunately, attackers are more likely to use the newest, most sophisticated techniques to evade detection and thus prevent these very attacks. The process can be broken down into several stages:

  1. Infection: The ransomware gains access to the system, often through user error or security vulnerabilities.
  2. Encryption: The ransomware encrypts files, rendering them inaccessible.
  3. Demand: A ransom note is displayed, demanding payment in exchange for the decryption key.
  4. Payment: The victim pays the ransom, typically in cryptocurrency, to the attackers.
  5. Decryption (Hopefully): If the payment is made, the attackers may (or may not) provide the decryption key to restore the files.

At KnowingCoin.com, we know the nuances of these attacks, and we know what it takes to defend your organization from the advance of ransomware to ensure your company’s safety.

The Current State of Ransomware in 2025

Statistics on Ransomware Payments

Fast forward to 2025 and the ransomware world is just as difficult, with many enterprises continuing to pay ransoms. Per the latest surveys, the median ransom demand has climbed to an all-time high of $1,324,429. Despite the high demands, 49% of the 3,400 organizations surveyed across 17 countries chose to pay the ransom to regain access to their data. Coincidentally, the median ransom payment in 2025 is $1 million—a drop from the $2 million median in 2024. This means that even though demands are through the roof, ongoing contract negotiations and/or other issues might be driving the amount actually paid out much lower.

Trends in Ransomware Attacks

Here are some key trends that will impact the ransomware environment in 2025. Perhaps the most alarming trend is backup solutions increasingly not being relied upon for data recovery. In an alarming trend, only half (54%) of companies are opting to restore from backups. This is a six-year low and may indicate either a lack of confidence in backup solutions or the difficulty in restoring terabytes of data. This decline has likely made the calculus behind continuing to pay ransoms more attractive. Threat actors are honing their craft and becoming more advanced. They tend to prey on entities that store sensitive data or places that lack a viable fallback plan. KnowingCoin.com remains at the forefront of these changes, ensuring that its members receive cutting-edge insights and resources to effectively pivot their organizations’ defenses.

Reasons Why People Still Pay Ransom

Fear of Data Loss

Fear of losing data is one of the biggest motivators driving ransom payments. Many organizations continue to face a painful dilemma. They are forced to choose between paying an exorbitant ransom or losing vital data, intellectual property and customer information. For them, the risk of data loss exceeds the cost and financial and ethical concerns with paying a ransom. The choice gets a little stickier because of onerous regulatory burdens for a few key industries. Now more than ever, healthcare and finance need to place data protection at the top of their priority list. The fallout of a data breach can be devastating, resulting in significant fines and costly legal liabilities.

Lack of Effective Backups

Whether or not a backup and recovery solution would allow for a full restoration remains a key factor in ransom payment decisions. As we noted last month, the practice of utilizing backups to restore critical data is at a six-year low. A combination of reasons feed into this problem. These are a lack of alternative recovery plans, failure to properly test backup solutions, and the increasing complexity of today’s IT environments. Once backups aren’t trustworthy or you’re unable to restore your backups, organizations are put in a difficult position. Organizations might feel pressure to pay the ransom. In fact, 40% of victims admitted their attackers "took advantage of a security gap they were not aware of." As a leading provider of IT backup and disaster recovery solutions, KnowingCoin.com strongly believes that all organizations should have a potentially feasible alternative to paying ransoms.

Consequences of Paying Ransom

Funding Criminal Activity

Not only does paying a ransom provide a direct line of revenue to criminal activity, it allows ransomware groups to stay in business and invent more dangerous attacks. With successful attacks comes a new wave of the vicious cycle. They give attackers greater capabilities, which in turn increases the combined threat landscape. Financial incentives are driving ransomware attacks to flourish into an extremely lucrative enterprise for cybercriminals. Such profitability draws in new actors and fuels creativity in methods of attack. By standing firm and refusing to pay ransoms, organizations of all sizes can play a key role in breaking this cycle and making ransomware attacks less profitable.

No Guarantee of Data Recovery

It’s often the case even after paying a ransom there are no promises made or able to be kept that data will be fully recovered. Either the attacker gives you a decryption key that works poorly or doesn’t work at all or their decryption process isn’t comprehensive and some files are just never decrypted. At worst, the attackers can just ghost after being paid with no way for the victim to recover. In addition, paying a ransom can actually increase the likelihood that an organization will be attacked again. Attackers can often assume that the organization is likely to just pay a ransom again. Even with the costs, 97% of organizations that had data encrypted were able to recover their data. KnowingCoin.com criminal-turned-cybersecurity-advisor recommends that organizations weigh these risks against the potential consequences of paying a ransom, asking about every possible alternative before even considering payment.

Alternatives to Paying Ransom

Strengthening Cybersecurity Measures

After all, the best way not to pay a ransom is to stop ransomware attacks before they start. We need a paradigm-shifting approach to cybersecurity. This can be achieved by requiring strong passwords, deploying multi-factor authentication, making sure to patch software vulnerabilities consistently, and training employees on phishing and other social engineering schemes. The original technical source of attacks was primarily (32%) through exploited vulnerabilities. First, every organization needs to invest in advanced threat detection and prevention technologies. This encompasses assets such as IDS, EDR solutions, and SIEMs.

Utilizing Data Recovery Solutions

In the event of a ransomware attack, having reliable data recovery solutions in place can significantly reduce the pressure to pay a ransom. First you need to conduct frequent backups of essential information. Apart from that, test backup and recovery procedures while building data replication and disaster recovery plans. Nonprofits need to look into using cloud-based backup and recovery services. These solutions provide a crucial first line of defense against ransomware attacks. KnowingCoin.com’s campaign emphasizes the importance of taking security steps beforehand. In addition, they focus on robust data recovery solutions to minimize the damage caused by ransomware attacks.

Conclusion

The Importance of Awareness and Preparedness

Fast forward to 2025 and protecting against ransomware is still one of the greatest threats facing any organization, large or small. For most companies, the probability of being hit by ransomware actors is simply a cost of doing business. The best way to prevent this risk is through awareness and preparation. Organizations need to truly grasp the changing ransomware threat, adopt robust and preventative security practices, and create strategic incident response plans. By taking a proactive approach, organizations can reduce their vulnerability to ransomware attacks and minimize the potential impact of a successful breach. Ransom demand has been declining. The median ransom demand was $2 million in 2024, $1.3 million in 2025.

Encouraging a Collective Response to Ransomware

Tackling the ransomware challenge will take a joined up effort by businesses, public sector agencies and security experts. This means sharing threat intelligence, working together on best practices, and advocating for stronger laws and regulations to help stop ransomware. In addition, private sector organizations must collaborate with law enforcement agencies to report ransomware attacks and help inform investigations. Nearly half—45%—said the criminals lowered the demand due to outside forces, like media coverage or law enforcement. It found that hiring incident responders before an incident occurs can save organizations millions by reducing ransom payments. They help recover faster and even stop attacks in real time. Join us to create a kinder, safer digital world. Together, we can reduce the impact ransomware has on our communities. KnowingCoin.com is committed to fostering this collective response, providing a platform for sharing knowledge and promoting best practices in cybersecurity.