Global firms succumb to ransomware: 86% pay up despite having advanced backup tools

Despite an explosion in cybersecurity tools and awareness campaigns, organizations around the world are still surrendering to ransomware attackers at an alarming rate. According to new research from Rubrik Zero Labs, 86% of organizations globally admitted to paying ransom demands following a cyberattack in the past year — a figure that underscores a harsh reality: recovery, not prevention, is where most defenses still crumble.

This finding comes from Rubrik’s 2025 report, “The State of Data Security: A Distributed Crisis,” which surveyed more than 1,600 IT and security leaders across ten countries, including the US, the UK, France, Germany, India, and Singapore. The report revealed that even as businesses embrace hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure to boost agility, many remain fundamentally unprepared to recover from ransomware without giving in to extortion.

Backup systems under attack

A key insight from the report is that 74% of organizations said their backup and recovery infrastructure was partially compromised, while 35% reported a complete compromise. This targeting of recovery systems has become a hallmark of modern ransomware campaigns.