Outlook
The data from 2025 reveals that the recent surge in German leaks is not an isolated incident, but a return to the high-pressure levels previously observed in 2022 and 2023. This resurgence reflects a more volatile and linguistically diverse European threat landscape going into 2026. The 92% growth in German leaks, tripling the European average for 2025, proves that non-English-speaking nations remain a primary target for global extortion groups.
The disruption of established brands like LockBit has rebalanced the ecosystem into a crowded field of agile data leak sites, such as SafePay and Qilin. These groups appear to be hitting Germany in lockstep with their global expansion, identifying the Mittelstand and German professional services as high-volume, target-rich environments. As threat actors continue to exploit complex supply chains, smaller organizations will remain critical pivot points for those aiming at the top of the industrial stack.
Recommendations to assist in addressing the threat posed by ransomware are captured in our white paper, Ransomware Protection and Containment Strategies: Practical Guidance for Endpoint Protection, Hardening, and Containment.
