The cybersecurity division of the Prosegur Group, Cipher, has published the report ‘Attacks on the supply chain: 2025 analysis and 2026 trends’, prepared by its intelligence unit x63 Unit, in which it is confirmed that cyber attacks directed at the supply chain worldwide during 2025 have doubled compared to the same period of the previous year, reaching an average cost of 4.33 million euros per incident.
These data confirm that this type of cyberattacks have established themselves as one of the main threats to cybersecurity on a global scale, being among the most costly and complex breaches for organizations to detect and manage.
The analysis, which integrates data from reference sources such as IBM, Verizon DBIR, Sophos, KELA and Sonatype, shows that 22.5% of all security breaches recorded in 2025 involved third parties or vendors, double the number in 2024. This trend confirms a structural change in the tactics of attackers, who prioritize indirect cyberattacks on organizations through their technological dependencies, software providers, cloud services and SaaS integrations.
The Prosegur Group’s cybersecurity unit highlights the intensification and diversification of the threat landscape throughout 2025, with especially high ransomware activity, one of the most disruptive types of cyberattacks, which translated into 4,701 incidents recorded globally between January and September. Adding to this pressure is the growing use of the open source ecosystem as a vector for cyber attacks, with 877,522 malicious packages detected in open source repositories, a trend that reflects the interest of malicious actors in exploiting dependencies widely used by organizations.
Critical sectors most affected
This context has had an especially significant impact on the manufacturing sector, where cyberattacks grew by 61% year-on-year, placing it among the most affected areas along with technology, retail and other highly interconnected critical sectors.
The report also highlights that it takes organizations an average of 254 days to detect and contain a breach originating in the supply chain, which amplifies the operational, economic and reputational impact of these cyberattacks. On a global scale, the added cost associated with this type of cyberattacks is estimated at more than $53.2 billion annually.
According to David Manzanero Iglesias, head of Cipher’s x63 Unit, “the digital supply chain has become the new attack perimeter. Adversaries no longer need to directly violate a large company; it is enough for them to compromise one of its technology providers to escalate the impact of cyberattacks silently and massively.”
Recent cases in large distribution chains and industrial manufacturers show that these cyberattacks can cause operational interruptions, production stops and million-dollar losses in income and market value.
Cyberattacks can cause operational interruptions, production stops and million-dollar losses
Looking ahead to 2026, Cipher anticipates an intensification of cyberattacks on the supply chain linked to the use of artificial intelligence, digital identities and managed services, as well as an evolution of ransomware towards triple extortion models. In this context, the report recommends strengthening third-party risk management, auditing critical integrations, adopting Zero Trust architectures and drastically reducing detection times through advanced detection and managed response systems against cyber attacks.
