Security leaders have fought to keep pace with rapidly evolving ransomware tactics for decades, and 2024 served as yet another reminder of the dynamic and persistent nature of the ransomware threat. Attacks are more personalized, sophisticated, and difficult to defend against.

Last year, ransomware groups made headlines for their ruthlessness, even going as far as targeting the children of corporate executives to force ransom payments. High-profile law enforcement actions like Operation Endgame and Operation Duck Hunt led to significant takedowns of major initial access brokers and ransomware families, yet many have proven resilient, able to quickly regroup and launch new attacks.The Zscaler ThreatLabz research team continues to track ransomware activity to provide insights into how these threats are evolving. The latest ThreatLabz Ransomware Report offers deep analysis of 4.4 million ransomware attacks blocked by the Zscaler cloud (a 17.8% year-over-year increase). The report provides valuable insights into primary attack targets as well as ransomware actors’ evolving tactics and demands—including a record-breaking US$75 million ransom payment uncovered by ThreatLabz in 2024.

Based on extensive research and analysis, ThreatLabz has made the following predictions on ransomware trends for 2025—a year in which ransomware will remain a top concern for organizations worldwide.

Top ransomware predictions for 2025Prediction 1: AI-powered social engineering attacks will surge and fuel ransomware campaignsIn 2025, threat actors will increasingly use generative AI (GenAI) to conduct more effective social engineering attacks. A top emerging AI-driven trend is voice phishing (vishing). With the proliferation of GenAI-based tooling, initial access broker groups will increasingly leverage AI-generated voices that sound shockingly realistic, even adopting local accents and dialects to deceive victims.

These attacks will aim to trick employees into granting access to corporate environments in order to exfiltrate data and deploy ransomware. Ransomware attacks will become both more convincing and difficult to detect, underscoring the need for AI-powered zero trust security measures.

Prediction 2: Ransomware threat actors will adopt highly targeted attack strategiesSophisticated ransomware groups will shift away from large-scale, indiscriminate attacks and instead focus on low-volume, high-impact campaigns in 2025. These calculated attacks, modeled by groups like Dark Angels in 2024, will prioritize focusing on individual companies, stealing vast amounts of data without encrypting files, and evading media and law enforcement scrutiny. Threat actors are likely to take a three-pronged approach—combining social engineering (particularly vishing), ransomware, and data exfiltration—to amplify extortion leverage.

Prediction 3: Critical sectors will face persistent targeting by ransomware groupsManufacturing, healthcare, education, and energy will remain primary targets for ransomware, with no slowdown in attacks expected in 2025. Critical infrastructure and susceptibility to operational disruptions make these sectors particularly attractive to cybercriminals. The ThreatLabz 2024 Ransomware Report revealed that the energy sector saw a 500% year-over-year spike in ransomware, while manufacturing, healthcare, and education were among the top 5 most targeted industries—trends that we expect will persist in the year ahead.

Prediction 4: SEC regulations will drive increased cyber incident transparency With the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) mandating stricter cybersecurity incident reporting, 2025 will see an increase in organizations disclosing ransomware incidents and payouts. Organizations will no longer be able to hide ransomware incidents from the public, which will (hopefully) drive a culture of transparency and accountability. While this exposes businesses to reputational risk, it will encourage stronger, proactive security practices defenses as companies work to avoid public scrutiny and legal consequences.

Prediction 5: Ransomware payouts will rise with the timesIn 2025, ransom demands are expected to grow even higher as cybercriminals adopt more collaborative approaches to maximize profits. The ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) model will continue to evolve with cybercrime groups specializing in designated attack tactics and stages. These sophisticated profit-sharing models will drive more efficient and profitable ransomware campaigns, leading to higher ransom demands across industries.

Prediction 6: High-volume data exfiltration ransomware attacks will be on the riseAttacks that exfiltrate large amounts of data, including more encryption-less incidents, will increase significantly in the year ahead. This trend, which started gaining momentum in 2022, sees threat actors focusing solely on exfiltrating data without encrypting systems. The approach allows for quicker, opportunistic operations and capitalizes on the fear of sensitive data being released to coerce victims into paying ransoms. It underscores a continuous shift in ransomware strategies toward more efficient and high-impact methods.

Prediction 7: International collaboration against cybercrime organizations will build upon existing effortsLaw enforcement and private industry will continue to collaborate in efforts to combat ransomware attacks, such as disrupting major initial access brokers and ransomware groups. International collaboration will become increasingly vital as global interconnectedness grows, making it easier for cybercriminals to operate transnationally. By sharing intelligence and expertise, these coordinated actions will more effectively disrupt global ransomware networks. Zscaler ThreatLabz has been at the forefront and instrumental in providing technical assistance for several of these operations over the past year.

How to combat ransomware in 2025As ransomware evolves, organizations must adopt proactive defense strategies to stay ahead of emerging tactics. Zscaler ThreatLabz recommends the following key actions:

Fight AI with AI: As threat actors use AI to create more effective, personalized campaigns, organizations must counter ransomware threats with AI-powered zero trust security that detects and mitigates these threats.
Adopt a zero trust architecture: A zero trust cloud security platform stops ransomware at every stage of the attack cycle:
Minimizing the attack surface: Replacing exploitable VPN and firewall architectures with a zero trust architecture hides users, applications, and devices behind a cloud proxy, making them invisible and undiscoverable from the threats on the internet.
Preventing compromise: TLS/SSL inspection, browser isolation, advanced sandboxing, and policy-driven access controls prevent access to malicious websites and detect unknown threats. This removes the possibility of accessing the corporate network, reducing the risk of initial compromise.
Eliminating lateral movement: Leveraging user-to-app (and app-to-app) segmentation, deception, and identity threat detection and response (ITDR), allows users to securely connect directly to applications, not the network, eliminating lateral movement risk.
Stopping data loss: Inline data loss prevention measures, combined with full inspection, thwarts attempts at data theft.

To learn more about existing and emerging ransomware threats, read the Zscaler ThreatLabz 2024 Ransomware Report.Request a custom demo on how Zscaler can help address your organization’s ransomware protection needs. Follow Zscaler ThreatLabz on X (Twitter) and our Security Research Blog to stay on top of the latest cyberthreats and security research. The Zscaler ThreatLabz threat research team continuously monitors threat intelligence from the world’s largest inline security cloud and shares its findings with the wider security community.

Forward-Looking Statements This blog contains forward-looking statements that are based on our management's beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to our management. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements concerning predictions about the state of ransomware threats and cyberattacks in calendar year 2025 and our ability to capitalize on such market opportunities; the use of Zero Trust architecture to combat ransomware attacks; and beliefs about the ability of AI and machine learning to reduce detection and remediation response times as well as proactively identify and stop cyberthreats. These forward-looking statements are subject to the safe harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions, and a significant number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from statements made in this blog, including security risks and developments unknown to Zscaler at the time of this blog and the assumptions underlying our predictions regarding ransomware in calendar year 2025. Additional risks and uncertainties are set forth in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) on December 5, 2024, which is available on our website at ir.zscaler.com and on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Any forward-looking statements in this release are based on the limited information currently available to Zscaler as of the date hereof, which is subject to change, and Zscaler does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements made in this blog, even if new information becomes available in the future.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Security Research | Blog Category Feed authored by Heather Bates. Read the original post at: https://www.zscaler.com/blogs/security-research/7-ransomware-predictions-2025-ai-threats-new-strategies