The True Cost of a Ransomware Attack
Ransomware costs extend far beyond the ransom demand itself. Organisations that focus only on the ransom figure dramatically underestimate their true exposure.
Breaking Down the Costs
According to Sophos's State of Ransomware 2025 report, the average recovery cost excluding ransom payments is $1.53 million. The median ransom payment for those who pay is $1.0 million. But these are only the direct costs.
- Downtime: The average ransomware recovery takes 24 days. For a business generating $500K in daily revenue, that is $12M in lost productivity and revenue.
- Legal and regulatory: Breach notification requirements, potential fines, and legal counsel can add $500K to $2M depending on data types and jurisdictions involved.
- Brand and customer impact: Customer churn following a public breach averages 3-5% according to Ponemon research, with long-term revenue implications.
- Cyber insurance premium increases: Post-incident renewals typically see 25-100% premium increases.
Prevention vs Recovery
IBM's 2025 data shows organisations with incident response plans, tested backups, and security monitoring contain ransomware incidents 80 days faster and at significantly lower cost. The investment in prevention is consistently cheaper than the cost of recovery.