RANSOMWARE PAYMENTS ARE DROPPING, BUT EMEA ORGANISATIONS ARE STILL UNPREPARED FOR ATTACKS

DESPITE THE NUMBER OF ORGANISATIONS PAYING RANSOMS DROPPING BY 22% YEAR-ON-YEAR, 63% WOULD STILL BE UNABLE TO RECOVER FROM A SITE-WIDE CRISIS DUE TO A LACK OF ALTERNATIVE INFRASTRUCTURE PLANS.

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Veeam has compared regional data from both its 2024 and 2025 Ransomware Trends Reports, which both look back on findings from the previous year, exploring long term ransomware and data resilience trends in EMEA. The data revealed that the number of EMEA organisations paying ransoms dropped by nearly a quarter (22%) from the previous year. However, this doesn't necessarily mean organisations are facing fewer attacks. Instead, improvements in data resilience capabilities and shifting attitudes toward negotiating with attackers are emerging.

Paying ransoms increasingly fails to recover data

Comparing the data, it's clear that organisations are increasingly able to recover data without paying ransoms; in 2023, 14% recovered data without paying a ransom, while in 2024, this doubled to 30%. At the same time, there is a growing sense of reality that paying ransoms does not guarantee that data will be recovered; in 2023, more than half (54%) of EMEA organisations who paid ransoms were able to recover their data, but in 2024, this dropped significantly to just 32% - less than a third.