In 2025, ransomware remained one of the most active and damaging cyber threats to organizations of all sizes. According to the recent “Top 10 Ransomware Groups of 2025” report by SOCRadar, the ransomware ecosystem did not shrink after law enforcement actions against major gangs — it adapted, fragmented, and in many cases became more resilient and dangerous.
For business owners prioritizing cybersecurity, these trends are a stark warning that traditional defensive strategies focused on detection and response are no longer sufficient. What companies need now is proactive protection that stops ransomware from executing in the first place. AppGuard offers that kind of protection — and is now available for commercial use to protect critical endpoints and servers.
Ransomware in 2025: A More Diverse and Dangerous Landscape
The SOCRadar analysis highlights how ransomware threats evolved last year, illustrating a threat landscape that is more distributed and sophisticated than ever.
Fragmented but Persistent Threat Actors
Rather than a few dominant ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) gangs controlling the ecosystem, 2025 saw a broader array of threat groups disrupting operations worldwide. Affiliates shifted between groups, tools were reused across operations, and some actors abandoned traditional models entirely to blend data theft and extortion with social pressure tactics.
Notable Actors in 2025
Here’s a snapshot of some of the most impactful ransomware groups identified in the SOCRadar report:
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Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters took the lead by combining social engineering with enterprise SaaS access, proving that theft and psychological pressure can rival traditional encryption-based ransomware.
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Qilin (Agenda) expanded globally and demonstrated how a highly organized RaaS platform can hit more than 1,000 victims through credential theft and lateral movement.
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Cl0p continued its supply-chain extortion strategy, leveraging vulnerabilities in enterprise software like Oracle EBS for large-scale data theft without even deploying ransomware binaries.
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DragonForce, SafePay, INC Ransom, Lynx, and RansomHub each showed how decentralized models, manual deployment techniques, and aggressive affiliate recruitment can make ransomware campaigns harder to attribute and mitigate.
While some legacy ransomware groups faced takedowns or disruptions, the underlying problem grew — new groups rose to take their place, and the total number of active threat actors increased significantly. Industry analysts outside the report noted that the number of ransomware groups climbed sharply in 2025, with many smaller actors adding to the overall threat volume.
Why Traditional “Detect and Respond” Strategies Fall Short
For years, many organizations have relied on security solutions that detect ransomware activity and respond after execution begins. But as the SOCRadar report makes clear, that reactive approach can be too slow:
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Ransomware gangs like Qilin and Cl0p exploit stolen credentials, exposed remote access services like RDP and VPN, and leverage social engineering to infiltrate environments long before traditional tools detect malicious activity.
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Some attacks don’t even involve encryption, focusing instead on data theft, supply-chain abuse, or public exposure tactics — issues that detection tools struggle to pinpoint until the damage is done.
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Recovery remains a costly and time-consuming process for many victims. In fact, industry data suggests organizations struggle to recover quickly even when they have backups in place — many cannot restore operations within 24 hours after an incident.
This means business owners can no longer depend solely on solutions that wait for malicious patterns to emerge and then try to respond. The next generation of ransomware is designed to evade detection, strike fast, and amplify damage before security teams can react.
The Case for Isolation and Containment with AppGuard
To truly protect modern networks, organizations need a defensive shift away from detect and respond and toward isolation and containment. AppGuard provides that shift.
What Makes AppGuard Different?
AppGuard employs a fundamentally different model of endpoint protection:
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Pre-execution isolation: Instead of waiting for malicious behavior to be detected, AppGuard isolates unknown or untrusted activity before it can execute.
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Containment of threats: If ransomware tries to run, it is contained instantly, preventing encryption, lateral movement, and other harmful behavior.
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Proven track record: With over ten years of real-world success protecting systems from advanced malware and ransomware variants, AppGuard has demonstrated its ability to stop threats others miss.
This approach plugs the gaps often left open by detection tools and security analytics, giving businesses true prevention instead of delayed response.
Final Thoughts
The Top 10 Ransomware Groups of 2025 report underscores one thing clearly: ransomware is not going away, and its tactics are only getting more creative and evasive. Business owners must rethink their cybersecurity strategies to stay ahead.
If you are counting on detection and response alone, you are likely leaving the door open to the very attacks that can cripple operations and destroy customer trust. Instead, move toward isolation and containment as the new baseline for endpoint defense.
Call to Action:
Talk with us at CHIPS about how AppGuard can protect your business from these evolving ransomware threats. Learn how shifting from detect and respond to isolation and containment can dramatically reduce your risk and help secure your organization for the long term. Contact CHIPS today to get started.
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