From Ransomware to "The Great Extraction": What 2026 Has in Store

If 2025 was the year the ransomware epidemic reached its peak, 2026 is becoming known as the Year of the Great Extraction.

For years, the "ransomware" narrative was simple: hackers lock your files, and you pay to get the key. But as we move through the first quarter of 2026, that script has been completely rewritten. We aren't just seeing more attacks; we are seeing a fundamental shift in what "ransom" actually means.

The 2025 Surge: A 50% Explosion

To understand where we are today, we have to look at the wreckage of 2025. Last year, the number of claimed ransomware attacks surged by 50% year-over-year. Groups like Qilin and Akira didn’t just grow; they industrialised. By mid-2025, incidents were hitting record highs, with over 6,300 cases exposed on the dark web in the first nine months alone.

However, a strange paradox emerged: while attacks went up, the percentage of victims who chose to pay the ransom plummeted to a record low of 28%. Organisations became better at backups, and law enforcement got better at disruption. The "lock and key" business model began to fail.

2026: The Pivot to "Pure Extortion"

Faced with diminishing returns from encryption, the cyber-underworld has adapted. So far in 2026, we are seeing the rise of Encryption-Free Ransomware. Attackers are increasingly skipping the "locking" phase entirely. Instead, they focus on silent data exfiltration, stealing massive troves of sensitive data and threatening to leak it.

As Corey Nachreiner, Chief Security Officer at WatchGuard, predicts for 2026: "Traditional encryption-based ransomware is expected to decline as threat actors turn their focus toward pure extortion and data theft."

This isn't just a change in tactics; it’s a change in leverage. You can restore a locked server from a backup, but you cannot "un-leak" your trade secrets, patient records, or customer IDs once they are on a public forum.

Multiple Faces of the 2026 Threat

Experts are currently debating what the defining label for 2026 should be. There are three leading theories:

1. The Year of "Identity-First" Breach: With MFA becoming standard, 2026 is seeing a surge in Session Token Theft. Attackers aren't "hacking" in anymore; they are "logging" in. Identity has become the new perimeter.

2. The Year of Agentic AI: We are seeing the first instances of Autonomous AI-Driven Attacks. These are machine-led threats that can independently plan, execute, and adapt their social engineering tactics in real-time.

3. The Year of Triple Extortion: It is no longer enough to threaten the company. Attackers are now directly harassing a company’s clients and employees. In early 2026, we’ve seen groups contact individual patients of healthcare providers to demand "protection fees" directly from them.

What the Experts are Saying

The sentiment in the industry has shifted from "detection" to "resilience." Kip Boyle, a leading vCISO, suggests: "In 2026, the primary metric for cybersecurity resilience won’t be speed of detection, but the depth of human trust."

Similarly, Vakaris Noreika, a cybersecurity expert at NordStellar, notes that the barrier to entry has never been lower: "The increase in ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) allows cybercriminals to scale their attacks... another key factor is the significant increase in the number of active ransomware groups."

The Path Forward

As we navigate the remainder of 2026, the message is clear: Backups are no longer the ultimate shield. If you are only protecting your availability (making sure your systems stay up), you are leaving your confidentiality (your data) wide open.

2026 demands a shift toward Data Sovereignty and Zero Trust Architecture. In an era where "The Great Extraction" is the new norm, the only way to win is to ensure that even if an attacker gets in, the data they find is useless to them.