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The State of Ransomware in Education 2026
226 IT and cybersecurity leaders from lower and higher education providers hit by ransomware report on a year that upended the sector's ransomware trends.
The sixth annual edition of this report examines how the root causes and consequences of ransomware attacks on lower education (students up to age 18) and higher education (students over 18) providers have shifted over the years, and where the two sectors are now diverging.
This year’s report also shines new light on previously unexplored areas, including where attacks start in the environment, the defensive role of multi-factor authentication (MFA) and firewalls, and the connection between identity attacks and ransomware.
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The pressure is mounting for the IT professionals who defend education providers. Drawing on the real-world experiences of 131 lower and 95 higher education providers hit by ransomware in the past year, the report explores:
- Why, and how, education gets hit: The technical and operational root causes behind attacks.
- A dramatic encryption reversal: Find out which education sector saw its data-encryption rate more than double in a single year.
- The long road back: See which sector recorded the highest share of recoveries lasting a month or longer.
- Demands up, payments down: Education navigated steeper ransom demands this year but emerged with lower typical payments.
- The human toll: Pressure, workload, and staff strain are higher for IT and security teams in education.