Many organizations still understand cyber extortion primarily as a malware problem. Ransomware encrypts files, systems go offline, and a ransom demand forces a crisis response. That sequence still exists, but it does not fully explain many of the highest-impact incidents of 2025. Drawing on hundreds of engagements, Coveware by Veeam observed that initial access and attacker leverage increasingly shift toward people, process, and identity, with targeted social engineering emerging as a defining entry pattern. In many of these cases, the intrusion began well before ransomware entered the picture, and no threat actor group illustrates that shift more clearly than Scattered Spider.  Read more

Digital transformation, cloud adoption, and AI have increased the value of enterprise data and expanded the attack surface around it. Data moves across clouds, applications, APIs, models, and automated systems faster than most organizations can track.  Read more