Ransomware in 2025: What Texas Businesses Need to Know

Ransomware crews did not take a holiday in 2024. According to the FBI's 2023 Internet Crime Report, businesses reported $59.6 million in ransomware losses, with Texas ranking among the top states for victim complaints because of our concentration of healthcare, manufacturing, and energy organizations. We expect the 2024 report to show another double-digit increase, fueled by gangs that now blend extortion with disruption.

Those losses balloon when you factor in recovery. The IBM 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report pegs the average total incident cost at $4.88 million, and organizations with critical infrastructure—exactly the ones powering Texas—paid nearly a million dollars more. In other words, the ransom demand is a rounding error compared to downtime, legal fees, and reputational damage.

Heading into 2025, Texas leaders need to assume three primary attack vectors: adversaries targeting operational technology (OT) that keeps plants and clinics running, crews sabotaging backups to remove your safety net, and supply-chain compromises that arrive through trusted vendors. This guide unpacks how those tactics are evolving and gives you a playbook—grounded in FBI, Verizon DBIR, and CISA guidance—for preventing the next lockup before it hits your balance sheet.

How Ransomware Has Changed in the Past 12 Months

Ransomware is no longer a one-and-done event. The 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report reports ransomware and extortion were involved in almost a third of all breaches it studied, and 92% of those incidents combined multiple pressure tactics. Gangs encrypt data, threaten to leak it, and increasingly harass customers or employees to force payment.

• Double extortion: Attackers steal sensitive files before encryption to gain leverage in negotiations.
• Triple extortion: They contact your clients, patients, or regulators directly, citing disclosure obligations to stir panic.
• Quadruple extortion: Some crews now launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks while systems are encrypted, overwhelming recovery efforts.

Average ransom demands have climbed into six- and seven-figure territory, and law enforcement says paying is still a gamble. The FBI logged multiple cases where victims wired funds only to discover corrupted decryption keys or second-wave extortion attempts. Attackers also collaborate—if you pay one group, word spreads quickly across affiliate networks.

Meanwhile, recovery costs keep rising. IBM found that organizations with mature incident response programs saved $2.33 million on average compared with those without them, largely because they contained attacks 54 days faster.

The FBI continues to warn victims not to pay because there is no guarantee you will regain access, and the payment bankrolls future attacks. Instead, the bureau recommends reporting incidents immediately so joint task forces can identify infrastructure, seize keys, and help other victims.

Why Attackers Are Targeting Your Operational Technology

Operational technology includes the programmable logic controllers (PLCs), building automation systems, and point-of-sale terminals that keep your physical world moving. For Texas manufacturers, refineries, hospitals, and school districts, downtime here is not just inconvenient—it is dangerous and wildly expensive.

The CISA/FBI advisory on DarkSide and the Colonial Pipeline attack illustrated how a single compromised VPN credential can halt fuel shipments across multiple states. More recently, LockBit affiliates have targeted manufacturing execution systems and OT historian databases, betting that every hour of downtime makes payment more likely.

Why the shift? OT environments often run legacy operating systems, lack network segmentation, and are monitored less frequently than office networks. Once attackers land on a flat network, they can disrupt building HVAC, production lines, or even hospital radiology equipment.

Texas industries should assume OT is on the menu. Energy companies face expanding attack surfaces from remote field operations. Manufacturers rely on older PLCs that cannot be patched quickly. Healthcare systems integrate biomedical devices that were never designed for modern security controls.

Mitigation requires isolating OT segments, enforcing jump hosts with multi-factor authentication, and monitoring east-west traffic. Our 24/7 security operations center maintains OT-specific detections, including alerts for suspicious Modbus commands and unauthorized engineering station activity.

When Your Safety Net Becomes the Target

Attackers know backups are the final line of defense. The Verizon DBIR notes that 94% of ransomware incidents involved attempts to compromise or disable backup infrastructure. Credential stuffing against backup consoles, deletion of shadow copies, and exploitation of outdated backup appliances are now standard tactics.

Texas organizations that rely on co-managed IT or outsourced backup vendors must validate controls firsthand. We regularly inherit environments where backup servers share domain admin credentials with production or where immutable storage has not been enabled.

• Adopt the 3-2-1-1 rule recommended by the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA): three copies of data, on two media types, with one off-site and one immutable copy.
• Restrict backup administrator accounts with just-in-time access and store credentials in a privileged access vault.
• Test restores at least quarterly—weekly for Tier 0 workloads—and document the results for auditors and insurers.

If you have not tested a full restore in the last 90 days, assume it will fail. Our business continuity practice pairs immutable backups with automated reporting so leadership sees backup health scores every Monday morning.

Your Vendors Can Become Your Weakest Link

Many Texas businesses rely on managed service providers, HVAC vendors, or software platforms that maintain remote access. Threat actors know this and invest in compromising vendors because it gives them trusted pathways into dozens—or hundreds—of downstream clients.

The Kaseya VSA supply-chain attack advisory remains a defining example: criminal affiliates pushed ransomware through trusted remote monitoring software, encrypting hundreds of businesses in one weekend. Similar tactics were used in 2023 against legal and accounting firms with privileged client VPN access.

Vendor diligence is no longer a checkbox. Require contractual commitments for MFA, logging, and 24/7 incident notification. Monitor vendor accounts with the same intensity as internal privileged users, and terminate access automatically if it is unused for 30 days.

We recommend quarterly reviews where vendors attest to control posture and provide evidence—especially for those handling sensitive data or physical access. Our compliance team folds these reviews into the compliance programs we manage so clients are audit-ready without spinning up separate projects.

Your 2025 Ransomware Defense Playbook

Before an Attack: Prevention Strategies

Start with identity. Enforce MFA everywhere—especially for administrators, remote access, and backup consoles—per CISA guidance. Segment networks so OT, finance, guest Wi-Fi, and backups never share the same blast radius. Deploy EDR/XDR on every endpoint and server, integrated with a SIEM that your team or an MSSP actually watches.

Patch relentlessly. Monitor the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog and prioritize remediation for anything CISA flags. Many ransomware operators use these exact CVEs to gain initial access.

Finally, build a culture of vigilance. Security awareness training should be practical and ongoing, with phishing simulations tailored to your industry. Document least-privilege policies and run quarterly vulnerability assessments to validate that controls are working.

During an Attack: Incident Response

Speed matters. The moment you suspect ransomware, isolate affected systems and disable outbound communication from compromised accounts. Activate your incident response team, preserve forensic evidence, and engage legal counsel early.

Incident response runbooks should include when to contact law enforcement. The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and CISA can provide decryptors, intelligence, and keep you aligned with regulatory expectations.

Communication is equally critical. Define stakeholder updates, external messaging, and customer support scripts in advance so you can move quickly without improvising.

After an Attack: Recovery & Hardening

Restore from clean, immutable backups and rebuild critical systems from gold images rather than trusting potentially compromised hosts. Conduct thorough post-incident reviews to identify root causes, then update controls, policies, and training.

Review cyber insurance obligations. Insurers increasingly require proof of MFA, documented response plans, and privileged access controls. If gaps exist, address them immediately to avoid coverage disputes.

Unique Challenges for Texas Businesses

Texas enterprises juggle cyber defense alongside hurricanes, power grid fluctuations, and distributed operations across Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston. Disaster recovery plans must combine physical resiliency with cybersecurity. That means coordinating generator failover drills with cyber tabletop exercises and validating that secondary sites are protected by the same MFA and monitoring controls as headquarters.

State regulations also matter. Under Texas Business & Commerce Code §521.053, you must notify affected residents and the Attorney General within 30 days of determining a breach occurred. Holding ransomware incidents close to the vest is not an option—delays increase legal exposure.

Finally, work with regional partners. When you call us at 2 AM, you get a Dallas-based analyst who already knows ERCOT grid realities and the vendors you rely on. That local knowledge can shave hours off response and keep operations running during a simultaneous weather and cyber event.

Conclusion

Ransomware crews are betting that OT blind spots, brittle backups, and over-trusted vendors will leave Texas organizations desperate enough to pay. Prevention is still cheaper than recovery—as IBM’s data proves—and the controls outlined above are accessible to organizations of every size.

If you want a second set of eyes, our team delivers security-first managed IT with one predictable investment. We’ll benchmark your defenses, validate your backups, and run tabletop drills with leadership—no surprise bills, ever.

Ready to take the next step? Schedule your free security assessment or call us at 214-919-5065. We protect Texas businesses from 10,000+ threats every month—and we’re ready to add your environment to the list.