Schools are getting better at navigating ransomware attacks, Sophos finds

Though schools’ average ransomware recovery costs decreased 39%, from $3.76 million to $2.28 million, within the last year, Sophos found that lower education providers still reported the highest recovery costs in comparison to other sectors in 2025.

Still, there is encouraging evidence that schools are bolstering their cybersecurity measures, as just 29% of ransomware attacks in lower education resulted in data being encrypted. Encryption is used to make a ransomware victim’s data and files accessible only to the threat actor. That figure marks the lowest data encryption rate reported across any industry, Sophos said. 

On top of that, schools were increasingly able to stop ransomware attacks before their data could be encrypted — jumping from 14% to 67% in the past year. That encryption prevention rate is far higher than the 44% average across all business sectors, according to Sophos.

Read more at K-12 Dive