Coveware by Veeam has unveiled its Q3 ransomware report, revealing that ransom payments have fallen rapidly during 2025.
Average payments fell by 66%, while median payments dropped by 65% to around $140,000.
Coveware says this reflects the intersecting dynamics of two trends:
- Large enterprises are increasingly resisting the pressure to pay ransoms. Several high-profile data exfiltration campaigns were largely unfruitful for the attackers, despite widely reported impacts on the victim organizations.
- Mid-market attacks are relatively more likely to result in a ransom payment of a lesser amount. Smaller organizations cannot afford large ransoms but remain easier to disrupt. Groups are increasingly leveraging this high-volume, low-demand strategy.
Ransom payment rates dropped to just 23% in Q3, showing that cyber-extortion’s overall success rate is declining. Cyber defenders, law enforcement, and legal specialists should view this as validation of collective progress, says Coveware.
