New research reveals evolving threat tactics, the rising role of business email compromise, and the importance of proactive security measures

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn., Feb. 26, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- February 26, 2025 – Arctic Wolf®, a global leader in security operations, today released its annual Arctic Wolf Threat Report, offering an in-depth analysis of the evolving cyber threat landscape. This year’s findings underscore how cybercriminals are adapting their methods to bypass stronger security defenses—prioritizing data theft, refining business email compromise (BEC) scams, and exploiting known vulnerabilities to infiltrate organizations worldwide.

Leveraging insights from Arctic Wolf’s incident response (IR) engagements, threat intelligence research, and telemetry from the Arctic Wolf Aurora Platform, the report provides a detailed examination of the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) attackers are using to outmaneuver traditional defenses. It also offers actionable recommendations for organizations looking to enhance their cybersecurity resilience, taking advantage of the report’s description of the current threat landscape.

“The 2025 Arctic Wolf Threat Report highlights a critical shift in cybercriminal behavior: data exfiltration has become the norm, not the exception,” said Kerri Shafer-Page, vice president of incident response, Arctic Wolf. “Threat actors are no longer just locking up data with ransomware; they’re stealing it first to maximize pressure on victims. The insights help organizations understand the risks they face today and shape the advanced detection and response strategies embedded within the Arctic Wolf Aurora Platform to keep our customers secure.”

Key findings from the 2025 Arctic Wolf Threat Report include:

• Steal first, extort second. As organizations improve their ability to recover from ransomware, cybercriminals have turned to data exfiltration to increase leverage—96% of ransomware cases analyzed included data theft.
• The cybercrime trifecta. Three types of cybersecurity incidents account for 95% of all incident response (IR) cases: ransomware 44%, business email compromise (BEC) 27%, and intrusions 24%.
• Threat actors follow the money. BEC continues to grow as a preferred tactic, particularly in the finance and insurance sector, where it accounted for 53% of IR cases—making it the only industry where BEC outpaced ransomware.
• Patch or pay. In 76% of intrusion cases, attackers exploited just 10 specific vulnerabilities—none of which were zero-days, and most linked to remote access tools and externally facing services. This reinforces the need for proactive patch management.
• Ransomware’s price tag: $600K. Median ransom demands remain high at $600,000 USD, demonstrating that ransomware remains a lucrative business for cybercriminals despite increased law enforcement action.
• Never split the difference. The Arctic Wolf Incident Response Team helped reduce aggregate ransom demands by 64%, and 70% of clients using Arctic Wolf’s negotiation services avoided paying ransoms altogether.

The 2025 Arctic Wolf Threat Report brings together Arctic Wolf’s top security minds—from incident responders and researchers to data scientists and engineers—to provide a comprehensive analysis of today’s evolving cyber threat landscape. This essential resource helps security, IT, and business leaders anticipate threats, strengthen defenses, and stay ahead of adversaries. Powered by insights from the Arctic Wolf Aurora Platform and backed by security operations expertise from one of the world’s largest commercial Security Operations Centers (SOCs), Arctic Wolf delivers the intelligence and defense organizations need to proactively detect, respond to, and remediate cyber threats.

For additional insights and to download the full 2025 Arctic Wolf Threat Report, visit arcticwolf.com.

Additional Resources:

• Join the conversation with Arctic Wolf on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube
• Visit arcticwolf.com to learn more about our security operations solutions
• If you’re ready to get started, request a demo, get a quote, or conduct a Security Operations Maturity Assessment
• Want to join Arctic Wolf’s Partner Program? Apply today

About Arctic Wolf

Arctic Wolf® is a global leader in security operations, enabling customers to manage their cyber risk in the face of modern cyber-attacks via a premier cloud-native security operations platform. The Arctic Wolf Aurora Platform ingests and analyzes more than eight trillion security events a week to help enable cyber defense at an unprecedented capacity and scale, empowering customers of virtually any size across a wide range of industries to feel confident in their security posture, readiness, and long-term resilience. By delivering automated threat protection, response, and remediation capabilities, Arctic Wolf delivers world-class security operations with the push of a button so customers can defend their greatest assets at the speed of data.

Press Contact:
Lauren Back
PR@arcticwolf.com

© 2025 Arctic Wolf Networks, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Arctic Wolf, Aurora, Alpha AI, Arctic Wolf Security Operations Cloud, Arctic Wolf Managed Detection and Response, Arctic Wolf Managed Risk, Arctic Wolf Managed Security Awareness, Arctic Wolf Incident Response, and Arctic Wolf Concierge Security Team are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Arctic Wolf Networks, Inc. or Arctic Wolf Networks Canada, Inc. and any subsidiaries in Canada, the United States, and/or other countries.

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