According to a recent report by Sophos, malicious emails are the main attack method and recovery costs now amount to an average of €1.94 million.
The annual report “State of Ransomware in the Education Sector 2026”, which reveals that identity-based attack techniques were used in 85% of ransomware attacks against educational institutions. These techniques include malicious emails, phishing, the use of compromised credentials, and brute force attacks. This 85% percentage exceeded the cross-industry average of 79%, highlighting the role that identity compromise continues to play in ransomware incidents targeting primary, secondary and higher education institutions.
Slow recovery after receiving an attack
Malicious emails were the leading technical cause of ransomware attacks in both primary and secondary education (31%) and higher education (29%). The report also revealed that 77% of higher education institutions and 71% of K-12 institutions said their ransomware incident was also their most serious identity attack.
Educational institutions also recover more slowly after suffering an attack. Primary and secondary education institutions, as well as higher education institutions, are approximately twice as likely as the cross-sector average to need between one and three months to fully recover. Primary education fared worst of all: 31% took a month or more to return to normal, the highest percentage of all sectors.
”Educational institutions remain attractive targets because they have large amounts of personal data and, at the same time, operate with significant resource limitations,” he says. Ross McKerchar, Chief Information Security Officer at Sophos. “Today’s attackers don’t need a crowbar when they can steal keys. Identity theft has become one of the most effective ways to gain access to an organization, and artificial intelligence is only increasing the speed, scale and sophistication of these attacks. The most resilient institutions are those that consider identity as a fundamental security control and combine it with integrated detection and response capabilities that can stop threats before they become large-scale incidents. ”
Other notable findings from the report
- Educational organizations reported greater operational difficulties than the intersectoral average. More than half (53%) of higher education institutions reported lacking the skills or knowledge to detect and stop attacks in time, compared to 35% across all sectors, while K-12 institutions most frequently cited human error (52%), lack of protection (47%), unknown security gaps (42%) and limited capacity (41%) as contributing factors.
- Data encryption rates doubled in primary and secondary education. The percentage of K-12 schools whose data was encrypted during a ransomware attack more than doubled year over year, from 29% in 2025 to 61% in 2026. Across the education sector, 58% of ransomware attacks resulted in data encryption.
- Data recovery relied heavily on backups. More than three-quarters (77%) of primary and secondary education institutions and 69% of higher education institutions recovered encrypted data through backups, above the cross-industry average of 66%.
- Ransom demands remained high despite a decline that has continued for several years. The average ransom demands for educational institutions was 665,000 euros, above the cross-sector median of 599,000 euros. This average of ransom demands in the education sector has decreased for two consecutive years, while payments increased by 12,870 euros between the 2025 and 2026 reports.
- Recovery costs increased and recovery times remained long. The average recovery costs after a ransomware attack reached €1.94 million across the entire education sector, exceeding the cross-sector average of €1.46 million. More than a quarter (26%) of education organizations took between one and three months to fully recover from an attack, almost double the cross-industry average (14%).
- The burden on IT and security teams following data encryption intensified. More than half (53%) of higher education sector teams reported increased pressure from senior management, compared to 40% across all sectors combined. About 39% of education organizations reported staff absences due to stress or mental health issues following a ransomware attack, compared to 29% across all sectors combined. The education sector also saw high manager turnover, with 29% of higher education teams and 27% of primary and secondary education teams seeing their managers replaced following the attack, compared to a cross-industry average of 21%.
Education Data Recovery Relies Largely on Backups Made
The results of the “State of Ransomware in Education 2026” report are based on an independent survey of 226 education IT and cybersecurity leaders in 17 countries whose organizations were affected by a ransomware attack in the last year. The research was carried out between January and March 2026. For the purposes of this report, age groups are defined as secondary education (typically students up to 18 years old) and higher education (typically students over 18 years old). This is the sixth year that Sophos has collected this data.
