The annual State of Ransomware report for 2026 reveals that the average ransom payment has reached $1.2 million, a 40% increase from the previous year. Healthcare has overtaken financial services as the most targeted industry, with 67% of healthcare organizations reporting ransomware incidents.
The report also found that organizations with incident response plans in place recovered 54% faster than those without, and that ransom payments remain a controversial topic — only 41% of organizations that paid recovered their data.
Key recommendations include maintaining offline backups, implementing multi-factor authentication, and conducting regular tabletop exercises.