The State of Ransomware in Education 2026

Insights from 226 IT and cybersecurity leaders across the education sector in 17 countries whose organizations were hit by ransomware in the past year.

This year's State of Ransomware survey showed promising signs that education providers are building resilience against ransomware attacks. But the costs and recovery timelines after attacks are still climbing. Recovery costs rose across lower education (students up to age 18) and higher education providers (over 18) this year, with higher education's average recovery bill growing by more than $1 million. And one education sector now ranks among the slowest to recover when compared to the complete list of sectors surveyed.

The sixth annual Sophos State of Ransomware in Education report is now available with detailed findings filtered by survey respondents from higher and lower education providers: 131 from lower education and 95 from higher education whose organizations were hit by ransomware in the last 12 months. The survey was administered from January to March 2026.

Click here to access the full report now.

Identity-based vectors, including malicious email, phishing, compromised credentials, and brute force attacks, initiated 85% of attacks across education, above the 79% overall survey rate. 

Malicious email was the single most common technical root cause in both lower education (31%) and higher education (29%).

However, the identity theme runs deeper than the entry point for ransomware attacks. 73% of education victims confirmed their ransomware attack was also their most significant identity attack in the past year. That was six percentage points above the 67% overall survey rate. Higher education had the most overlap at 77%, while lower education’s rate was 71%. The 67% overall survey finding was also featured in our State of Identity Security 2026 report earlier in the year.

Education was worse off operationally than the overall survey sample