2026 — Government threat assessments continue to identify ransomware as a major threat to critical infrastructure and essential public services.
What happened
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security’s 2025–2026 assessment calls ransomware the leading cybercrime threat to Canadian critical infrastructure. New Jersey’s 2026 assessment likewise expects ransomware groups to continue targeting critical infrastructure and widely deployed enterprise software. These are risk assessments, not a claim that every sector or country experiences the same incident rate.
Why it matters
Ransomware becomes a safety and continuity problem when it disrupts hospitals, utilities, municipalities or emergency communications. Restoration priorities, manual workarounds and dependencies on vendors matter as much as endpoint detection.
Security and infrastructure impact
Infrastructure operators need tested offline recovery, segmented IT and OT environments, protected identity systems and decision-ready incident playbooks. Exercises should include loss of a shared service and determine which physical operations can continue safely.