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Key Findings
- The number of newly formed ransomware groups increased by 30% during the 12 months to the end of October 2025
- New, white-label Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) platforms now enable cybercriminal groups to create their own brands
- Cybercriminal groups are abandoning encryption in favour of pure data exfiltration for faster, lower-cost cyber-attacks
- Global vulnerability disclosures rose 21% to exceed 35,000 in the year to the end of October 2025
- First evidence of a nation-state-backed threat group leveraging Claude’s agentic capabilities to orchestrate attacks, with AI agents performing up to 90% of the intrusion activity
- Threat actors from Russia, China, and Iran remain the top threats to the public sector as they sustain large cyber espionage campaigns, while nation-state-sponsored bad actors likely earned over $2 billion from cybercrime in 2025.
- Financially motivated cybercriminal gangs remain the biggest threat to the sector
- Ransomware targeting grew by 44%
- The sector saw activity across 80 countries with organisations from the US, France, and Israel accounting for the majority of attacks
- Data breaches decreased by 18%, reflecting a continued intent for ransom pressure through disruption over leaked data sales Hacktivism targeting grew by 2%
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To explore how intelligence-led security approaches translate into practical defensive outcomes, organisations are encouraged to participate in the Microsoft Threat Protection Workshop.





