Over the past year, ransomware has continued to evolve from a purely technical incident into a full-scale operational crisis for school districts, universities, and government agencies. While some recent data suggests modest fluctuations in attack volume, the overall threat landscape tells a more sobering story: attackers are becoming more strategic, more coercive, and more effective at maximizing disruption, especially against public-sector organizations.
The lesson is clear. This is no longer just about restoring files. It’s about maintaining trust, continuity of services, and the ability to operate under sustained pressure.
Why Education Remains a Prime Target
The education section remains a prime target even though recent reporting shows that ransomware attacks against the education sector experienced their first quarterly dip since early 2024, with approximately 180 education-related attacks recorded globally through the first three quarters of 2025. At first glance, that may appear encouraging.
In reality, the dip reflects attacker strategy more than improved security.
Education organizations K–12 districts, colleges, and universities continue to offer a highly attractive combination of constrained budgets, complex identity environments, and limited tolerance for downtime. Attackers do not need to target every institution. They only need to compromise enough high-impact organizations to maintain profitability.
Attacks Are Timed for Maximum Disruption
Timing also matters. Many attacks are deliberately launched during:
- the start of the school year,
- exam periods,
- enrollment and registration cycles, or
- payroll and financial aid processing windows.
When instructional continuity or student services are on the line, the pressure to resolve incidents quickly intensifies which is exactly the leverage attackers seek.
Interconnected Systems Increase Risk
Globally, ransomware activity in 2025 has skewed heavily toward critical sectors, with manufacturing, healthcare, and energy accounting for nearly half of observed attacks. The United States remains the most targeted country.
For schools and government agencies, this matters even if they are not classified as “critical infrastructure” themselves.
Public-sector organizations are deeply interconnected with these sectors:
- payroll and benefits providers,
- managed service providers,
- student information systems,
- utilities, telecom, and healthcare partners.
As ransomware increasingly exploits supply-chain dependencies, a single compromise can ripple across multiple organizations. In many cases, operational disruption originates not from a direct attack, but from the failure of a trusted third party.
Identity Systems Are the New Battleground
One of the most important shifts in modern ransomware is the focus on identity systems.
Recent research shows that more than 80% of ransomware attacks now involve the compromise of identity infrastructure, such as Active Directory, Entra ID, or cloud identity providers. Once attackers gain control of identity, ransomware becomes far more damaging:
- Security tools can be disabled.
- Privileged accounts can be created or altered.
- Persistence mechanisms can be embedded to survive restoration.
- Recovery efforts slow dramatically because trust in the environment is lost.
Even more concerning, most victims experience repeat attacks, often because attackers retain credentials or backdoors that were never fully eradicated.
Despite this, many organizations still lack:
- documented identity recovery procedures,
- dedicated backups for directory services,
- or tested processes for restoring identity safely before re-enabling business systems.
When identity fails, recovery is no longer measured in hours or days, it stretches into weeks. Those weeks are with extortion tactics that have escalated beyond encryption.
Extortion Goes Beyond Data Encryption
Ransomware is no longer just about locking data. Attackers increasingly pair encryption with data theft and coercion, including:
- threats to publicly leak sensitive student, employee, or constituent data,
- threats to report organizations to regulators,
- and, in some cases, direct physical or personal threats against staff.
Government agencies are particularly vulnerable to these tactics due to transparency obligations, regulatory reporting requirements, and public scrutiny. Even when systems are restored quickly, the risk of reputational damage and legal exposure can persist long after the incident itself.
This evolution means that ransomware response must extend well beyond IT. Legal counsel, communications teams, executive leadership, and external partners must all be part of a coordinated response from the outset.
What Resilient Organizations Do Differently
Across education and government environments, organizations that recover faster and suffer less long-term impact share several common traits.
They treat identity as critical infrastructure.
Multi-factor authentication, reduced standing privileges, and monitoring for identity abuse are foundational controls not optional enhancements.
They plan for identity recovery, not just data recovery.
Backups alone are insufficient if identity cannot be trusted. Resilient organizations document and test directory service recovery as rigorously as server restoration.
They assume breach and plan for disruption.
Rather than asking “How do we prevent every attack?”, they ask:
- How do we operate for five days without email?
- How do we process payroll manually?
- Who can authorize emergency actions under pressure?
They practice response under realistic conditions.
Tabletop exercises include identity compromise, data leak scenarios, third-party outages, and executive decision-making because ransomware is as much a leadership challenge as a technical one.
They treat vendor risk as part of ransomware readiness.
Access controls, incident notification timelines, MFA enforcement, and evidence of backup testing are increasingly non-negotiable for vendors embedded in public-sector operations.
The Bottom Line: Ransomware Is Maturing
What does all this mean? It means that ransomware is not fading, it is maturing.
Education institutions and government agencies are no longer targeted simply because they are “easy.” They are targeted because they are essential, visible, and interconnected. Identity compromise, operational disruption, and aggressive extortion tactics are now standard components of modern attacks.
Organizations that focus solely on prevention will continue to struggle. Those that invest in resilience in identity security, tested recovery, and leadership preparedness are the ones best positioned to withstand the next incident without losing weeks of operations, public trust, or control of the narrative.
The question is no longer if ransomware will occur, but whether your organization can continue to function when it does.
If you need further guidance or have any questions on this topic, we are here to help. Please do not hesitate to reach out to discuss your specific situation.
This material has been prepared for general, informational purposes only and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, tax, legal or accounting advice. Should you require any such advice, please contact us directly. The information contained herein does not create, and your review or use of the information does not constitute, an accountant-client relationship.
