Dubai, United Arab Emirates: Sophos, a global cybersecurity leader, today released its State of Ransomware in Education 2026 report, revealing that identity-based attacks were responsible for 85% of ransomware incidents targeting education institutions.
These attacks involve techniques such as malicious email, phishing, credential compromise and brute-force attempts. The 85% figure exceeds the cross-sector average of 79% and highlights the critical role identity compromise continues to play in ransomware campaigns aimed at schools and universities.
Malicious email was the leading technical root cause, cited in 31% of attacks against lower education (typically students up to age 18) and 29% in higher education (students over 18). Overall, 77% of higher education organizations and 71% of lower education organizations reported that their ransomware incident also represented their most severe identity-related attack.
Education institutions also recover more slowly than the average organization. Both lower and higher education were roughly twice as likely as the overall cross-sector average to require one to three months for full recovery. Lower education fared worst, with 31% taking a month or more to restore operations — the highest rate of any sector surveyed.
“Education institutions remain attractive targets because they manage vast quantities of personal data while often operating with limited resources,” said Ross McKerchar, Chief Information Security Officer at Sophos. “Today’s attackers don’t need a crowbar when they can steal the keys. Identity compromise has become one of the most effective means of entry, and AI is only accelerating the speed, scale and sophistication of these attacks. Resilient institutions treat identity as a core security control and combine it with integrated detection and response capabilities to stop threats before they escalate.”
Key findings from the 2026 report include:
Operational challenges: 53% of higher education institutions said they lacked the skills or expertise to detect and halt attacks in time, versus a cross-sector average of 35%. For lower education, the leading factors included human error (52%), inadequate protection (47%), unidentified security gaps (42%) and limited capacity (41%).
Rising data encryption: Data encryption rates more than doubled in lower education year-over-year, rising from 29% in 2025 to 61% in 2026. Across all education organizations, 58% of ransomware attacks resulted in encrypted data.
Backups as primary recovery tool: 77% of lower education and 69% of higher education institutions restored encrypted data using backups, both above the 66% cross-sector average.
Higher ransom demands: The median ransom demand for education institutions was $775,200, compared to $698,000 across all sectors. While median demands in education decreased for the second consecutive year, actual payments rose by $15,000 compared to 2025.
Increased recovery costs: Average recovery costs reached $2.26 million across education, well above the $1.7 million cross-sector average. More than a quarter (26%) of education organizations required one to three months to fully recover.
Human impact: 53% of higher education IT and security teams reported increased pressure from senior leadership after an attack, versus 40% overall. Around 39% of education organizations said staff were absent due to stress or mental health issues post-attack, compared to 29% across all sectors. Leadership turnover was also higher, with 29% of higher education and 27% of lower education teams seeing leaders replaced following an incident.
The findings are based on an independent survey of 226 IT and cybersecurity leaders in the education sector across 17 countries whose organizations experienced a ransomware attack in the past year. Research was conducted between January and March 2026.
To download the full State of Ransomware in Education 2026 report, visit:
