South African organisations are taking longer to recover from ransomware attacks | #ransomware | #cybercrime

Ransomware attacks are becoming increasingly unavoidable, especially here in South Africa. With frequency on the rise, the requirement to recover as quickly as possible following an attack is becoming an organisational imperative, but the latest State of Ransomware Report by Sophos shows that locally, recovery times are taking longer.

The concerning statistic from the Report, which garnered the feedback from 135 IT and cybersecurity leaders in South Africa working in organisations that were hit by ransomware in the last year, found that 40 percent of South African organisations recovered from said attack in up to a week.

To put that into context, this is the lowest of any country surveyed in this year’s Report, and represents a notable drop from the 47 percent, recorded in the 2025 report.

These percentages get worse the longer it takes to recover, with Sophos pointing out that 13 percent of organisations took between one and six months to recover, which is a significant drop from the 19 perecent in the 2025 report.

The pressure to recover faster is also having an impact at a structural level for organisations. Here, Sophos highlighted that the IT and cybersecurity professionals responsible for managing the incidents are coming under increased scrutiny and being pushed for answers.

“Among organisations where data was encrypted, 52% reported increased pressure from senior leaders, while 42% said their teams received greater recognition from leadership,” the cybersecurity company emphasised.

“Another 39% experienced changes to their team or organisational structure, 36% reported greater anxiety or stress about future attacks, and 24% said the team’s leadership had been replaced,” it added.

As such, the push to recover from ransomware attacks is also taking a considerable mental toll on employees.

In terms of what steps can be taken by organisations. Outside of simply investing more resources, Sophos noted that organisations should place greater importance of where they choose to deploy resources. To that end, it advised that, “Organizations should prioritize identity threat detection and response (ITDR), enforce multi-factor authentication across all access points, and regularly audit both human and non-human identity credentials.”

The inbox is also an environment where greater efforts should be placed, according to Sophos. “With phishing and malicious email accounting for over one-third of ransomware root causes in South Africa, organizations should deploy advanced email filtering, implement DMARC/DKIM/SPF protocols, and invest in regular phishing awareness training,” it explained.

“Organizations that maintained robust backup systems recovered encrypted data at nearly record rates in the past year. Backups should be tested regularly, stored offline or in immutable formats, and integrated into a documented incident response plan that can be executed under pressure,” it concluded.

To download (PDF) and read the South African Sophos State of Ransomware Report 2026, head here.