On Easter Weekend 2025, something was amiss at one retailer’s stores across the United Kingdom. Contactless payments failed. Click-and-collect orders vanished. Shelves emptied.

Retailers depend on holiday weekends for revenue. Instead, this retailer would ultimately report a £300 million loss in market value , resort to pen and paper to track inventory, and shut down its entire online operation for more than six weeks.

The culprits were not nation-state actors or elite hackers but loosely affiliated groups of cybercriminals using commercially available ransomware as a service (RaaS) tools.

It’s enough to make you question your current security posture.

The new ransomware reality: Younger, faster, stronger

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Ransomware isn’t just evolving — it’s industrializing. And your security strategy could be leaving you exposed.

Ransomware spiked by 37% in 2024, accounting for 44% of data breaches globally, according to the Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report .…