Ransomware attacks are continuing to rise across multiple industries, but two sectors in particular have seen significant increases: information technology and food production.
According to a recent report highlighted by Cybersecurity Dive, both sectors experienced notable spikes in ransomware activity during 2025, with attackers refining their tactics and targeting organizations that sit at critical points in global supply chains.
For business leaders, these developments reinforce a critical reality. Cybercriminals are evolving faster than traditional security strategies can keep up. The security model built around detecting threats and responding after the fact is increasingly proving insufficient.
One of the most striking findings in the report is the surge in ransomware attacks targeting the IT sector.
According to the Information Technology Information Sharing and Analysis Center (IT-ISAC), ransomware incidents affecting IT organizations rose dramatically in 2025. The sector experienced nearly 750 incidents, compared to roughly 300 incidents the previous year, representing more than a doubling of attacks.
Why the sudden focus on IT companies?
Because IT providers often sit at the center of large digital ecosystems. Managed service providers, software vendors, and IT infrastructure companies frequently support dozens or even hundreds of downstream organizations.
When attackers compromise a single IT provider, they can potentially gain access to an entire network of customers. This supply chain leverage makes IT organizations an extremely attractive target.
The report notes that ransomware groups are increasingly exploiting supply chain vulnerabilities, allowing attackers to scale their impact across multiple organizations simultaneously.
In other words, attackers are no longer just targeting individual companies. They are targeting the digital infrastructure that supports entire industries.
The food and agriculture sector has also experienced a significant increase in ransomware attacks.
Food production companies, distributors, and agricultural organizations are becoming prime targets for several reasons:
• Many rely on legacy operational systems
• Supply chains operate on tight delivery schedules
• Disruptions can quickly impact production and distribution
These characteristics make the industry particularly vulnerable to ransomware.
If attackers can disrupt food production or logistics, they immediately create pressure on victims to restore operations quickly. That urgency can increase the likelihood of ransom payments.
Past incidents illustrate just how disruptive these attacks can be. For example, a ransomware attack against global meat processor JBS in 2021 forced shutdowns across multiple facilities and disrupted supply chains across several countries.
The lesson is clear. When ransomware hits critical industries like food production, the consequences extend far beyond the victim organization.
Entire supply chains can feel the impact.
The increase in ransomware activity is not only about the number of attacks. It is also about how quickly attackers are moving.
Reports cited in the Cybersecurity Dive article note that cybercriminals are accelerating their use of:
• Social engineering campaigns
• Rapid exploitation of zero day vulnerabilities
• Supply chain compromise techniques
These tactics allow attackers to move from initial access to full network compromise faster than ever before.
For organizations relying primarily on traditional security tools, this creates a major problem.
Most modern security stacks still rely heavily on a Detect and Respond approach. The assumption is that security tools will detect malicious behavior after it begins and then stop the attack before significant damage occurs.
Unfortunately, ransomware operators have become extremely good at evading detection long enough to achieve their objectives.
By the time many security tools detect an attack, the attacker may already have:
• Established persistence
• Moved laterally across the network
• Stolen sensitive data
• Deployed ransomware payloads
At that point, response becomes damage control rather than prevention.
The surge in ransomware across sectors like IT and food production highlights a fundamental weakness in traditional cybersecurity strategies.
Detection based security assumes that organizations can identify malicious activity quickly enough to stop it.
But modern attackers increasingly use:
• Living off the land techniques
• Legitimate system tools
• Trusted software processes
These tactics often appear normal to detection based tools.
This means attackers can operate inside environments without triggering alarms until it is too late.
For organizations that rely solely on detection and response, this creates an ongoing cycle of breaches, investigations, and recovery efforts.
A different approach is needed.
Instead of trying to detect every possible threat, a more effective strategy focuses on preventing attackers from gaining the ability to move and execute malicious activity in the first place.
This is where Isolation and Containment becomes critical.
Isolation based security prevents unauthorized processes from interacting with sensitive parts of the system. Even if malicious code enters an environment, it cannot execute or spread beyond its containment boundaries.
This dramatically reduces the attacker’s ability to escalate privileges, move laterally, or deploy ransomware.
Rather than chasing threats after they appear, isolation based protection limits what those threats can do.
This is exactly the model behind AppGuard.
AppGuard is a proven endpoint protection solution with more than a decade of real world success. Instead of relying on detection signatures or behavioral alerts, AppGuard enforces strict isolation policies that contain potentially dangerous activity.
This approach prevents many common ransomware techniques, including:
• Unauthorized script execution
• Memory based attacks
• Exploitation of trusted applications
• Lateral movement within networks
Because the attack cannot execute or spread, the ransomware event never reaches the stage where encryption or data theft can occur.
This approach fundamentally shifts cybersecurity away from reacting to attacks and toward preventing them from succeeding.
The rise in ransomware targeting IT providers and food production companies is not just another security headline.
It is a warning.
Attackers are deliberately targeting sectors that sit at the center of digital and physical supply chains. When these organizations are compromised, the ripple effects can impact thousands of businesses and millions of consumers.
As attackers become faster and more sophisticated, relying solely on Detect and Respond security strategies leaves organizations increasingly exposed.
The future of cybersecurity requires a shift toward Isolation and Containment.
If your organization is concerned about the rising threat of ransomware, now is the time to rethink your cybersecurity strategy.
At CHIPS, we help business leaders move beyond traditional detection based tools and adopt a prevention focused model built around Isolation and Containment.
AppGuard has a proven 10 year track record of stopping modern attacks by preventing them from executing and spreading inside the endpoint environment.
If you want to understand how AppGuard can prevent ransomware incidents like those now increasing across the IT and food sectors, we would welcome the opportunity to talk.
Reach out to the team at CHIPS to learn how you can move beyond Detect and Respond and start implementing a security strategy built on Isolation and Containment.
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