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Ransomware readiness lags as adversaries use AI across the attack chain to accelerate intrusion, encryption, and extortion

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 21, 2025-- According to the 2025 State of Ransomware Survey from CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD), 76% of global organizations struggle to match the speed and sophistication of AI-powered attacks. With 89% viewing AI-powered protection as essential to closing the gap, the findings make clear that the future of stopping breaches will be decided by who holds the AI advantage – adversaries or defenders.

“From malware development to social engineering, adversaries are weaponizing AI to accelerate every stage of attacks, collapsing the defender’s window of response,” said Elia Zaitsev, chief technology officer at CrowdStrike. “The 2025 State of Ransomware Survey reinforces that legacy defenses can’t match the speed or sophistication of AI-driven attacks. Time is the currency of modern cyber defense – and in today’s AI-driven threat landscape, every second counts.”

Key Findings from the 2025 State of Ransomware Survey

• Legacy Defenses Fall Behind: 48% of organizations cite AI-automated attack chains as today’s greatest ransomware threat, while 85% report traditional detection is becoming obsolete against AI-enhanced attacks.
• Speed Defines the Security Outcome: Nearly 50% of organizations fear that they can’t detect or respond as fast as AI-driven attacks can execute, with fewer than a quarter recovering within 24 hours and nearly 25% suffering significant disruption or data loss.
• Social Engineering Evolves with AI: Phishing remains a leading attack vector, with 87% saying AI makes lures more convincing and deepfakes emerging as a major driver of future ransomware attacks.
• Paying Ransom Fuels Repeat Attacks: 83% of organizations that paid a ransom were attacked again and 93% had data stolen anyway.
• The Leadership Disconnect: 76% report a disconnect between leadership’s perceived ransomware readiness and actual preparedness, underscoring the urgent need for board-level buy-in to modernize defenses.

CrowdStrike’s Agentic Approach to Outpacing AI-powered Threats

CrowdStrike puts defenders in front in the race for AI superiority – delivering the speed, intelligence, and automation to stop AI-driven threats and ransomware operations before they can disrupt, encrypt, or extort. Powered by the Agentic Security Platform, CrowdStrike’s Agentic Security Workforce places security analysts in command of mission-ready AI agents that handle critical security workflows and automate time-consuming tasks – flipping time in their favor. The result is AI-powered protection that keeps defenders ahead of AI-driven threats.

The full 2025 CrowdStrike State of Ransomware Survey is available for download here.

About CrowdStrike

CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD), a global cybersecurity leader, has redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced cloud-native platform for protecting critical areas of enterprise risk – endpoints and cloud workloads, identity and data.

Powered by the CrowdStrike Security Cloud and world-class AI, the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform leverages real-time indicators of attack, threat intelligence, evolving adversary tradecraft and enriched telemetry from across the enterprise to deliver hyper-accurate detections, automated protection and remediation, elite threat hunting and prioritized observability of vulnerabilities.

Purpose-built in the cloud with a single lightweight-agent architecture, the Falcon platform delivers rapid and scalable deployment, superior protection and performance, reduced complexity and immediate time-to-value.

CrowdStrike: We stop breaches.

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View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251020713023/en/

Media Contact
Jake Schuster
CrowdStrike Corporate Communications
press@crowdstrike.com

Source: CrowdStrike