Ransomware intrusions against universities, schools, and other educational organizations around the world declined from 188 in 2023 to 116 in 2024, according to StateScoop.
Attacks aimed at the education sector resulted in the compromise of 1.8 million records, with organizations sought to pay $847,000 in ransoms on average, a report from Comparitech revealed. Additional findings showed that only 1,200 of nearly 5,500 claimed ransomware incidents worldwide last year have been confirmed, most of which have been conducted by the RansomHub, LockBit, Medusa, and Play ransomware operations. "An attack might be unconfirmed because the ransomware group making the claim is lying, or because the targeted organization chose not to disclose the attack to the public," said the report. Such a development comes months after RansomHub was noted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to have compromised more than 200 organizations since its emergence in February. On the other hand, LockBit had its infrastructure taken down following an international law enforcement operation in June.
