According to Infosecurity Magazine, European organizations suffered a 13% increase in ransomware victims over the past year, with 1,380 organizations appearing on data leak sites between September 2024 and August 2025. The UK was the most targeted nation, followed by Germany, Italy, France, and Spain, with manufacturing, professional services, and technology sectors bearing the brunt of attacks. The Akira and LockBit ransomware groups were most successful with 167 and 162 victims respectively, while the report highlighted an alarming rise in “violence-as-a-service” attacks including 17 physical incidents since January 2024, predominantly in France. The evolving threat landscape now includes sophisticated tactics like vishing with native speakers and CAPTCHA lures, forcing Europol to create a specialized taskforce to address the growing physical security concerns.
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The Geopolitical Undercurrent Driving European Targeting
What makes Europe particularly vulnerable isn’t just its economic value but its regulatory environment. The CrowdStrike report correctly identifies GDPR as leverage for attackers, but this creates a cascading effect across the continent. Organizations facing potential regulatory fines of up to 4% of global revenue for data breaches face immense pressure to pay ransoms quietly. This dynamic creates a vicious cycle where successful attacks fund more sophisticated operations, while the public disclosure requirements of GDPR ironically make Europe a more attractive target by providing attackers with better intelligence about which compliance-sensitive organizations might pay.
The Manufacturing Sector’s Perfect Storm
Manufacturing’s position as the most targeted sector reflects deeper systemic vulnerabilities beyond what the report covers. Many European manufacturers operate legacy industrial control systems that cannot be easily patched or updated without disrupting production. The convergence of IT and OT networks has created attack surfaces that most manufacturers are ill-equipped to defend, while just-in-time production schedules mean even brief disruptions can trigger massive financial losses. When a manufacturing plant faces encryption, the decision often comes down to paying the ransom or facing production halts that could violate contractual obligations with automotive, aerospace, or consumer goods clients.
When Cybercrime Turns Physical
The emergence of violence-as-a-service represents a dangerous evolution that many security teams are unprepared to handle. The 17 documented physical attacks since January 2024, including the high-profile kidnapping of a Ledger co-founder, signal that traditional cybersecurity boundaries have collapsed. Security operations centers designed to monitor network traffic now must consider physical safety protocols, while executive protection teams need cybersecurity awareness. This blurring of digital and physical threats particularly impacts the cryptocurrency sector, where the borderless nature of transactions meets very real-world violence in specific geographic concentrations like France.
The Underground Economy Fueling the Crisis
The report’s mention of 260 initial access brokers advertising access to over 1,400 organizations reveals a sophisticated criminal ecosystem that operates like a legitimate business marketplace. These brokers specialize in network penetration then sell access to the highest bidder, creating a division of labor that makes ransomware attacks more efficient and scalable. For smaller criminal groups that lack the technical expertise to breach sophisticated networks, they can simply purchase ready-made access from specialists. This economy particularly threatens mid-market companies that invest in basic cybersecurity but lack the resources for advanced threat hunting that might detect these brokers’ footholds.
Defensive Challenges in a Fragmented Continent
Europe’s distributed political and legal landscape creates inherent defensive challenges that nation-state actors like Russia exploit. While the EU provides regulatory frameworks, cybersecurity enforcement and investigation capabilities remain largely national competencies. This allows threat actors to target organizations in countries with weaker cybercrime enforcement while operating from jurisdictions with limited extradition treaties. The concentration of attacks in specific countries like the UK and Germany doesn’t necessarily reflect weaker defenses but rather the higher value targets located in Europe’s largest economies, creating a protection disparity where smaller EU nations might benefit from the attention on their larger neighbors.
