Report by Microsoft
Microsoft Digital Defense Report 2025
Key Findings
There has been a 195% global increase in AI-generated identities used to bypass verification systems.
Business Email Compromise (BEC) accounted for 21% of successful cyber attacks, surpassing ransomware at 16%.
The total cybercrime value in Africa jumped from $192 million to $484 million in the past year.
AI-powered phishing campaigns achieve a 54% click-through rate, over four times higher than traditional phishing.
The number of cybercrime victims in Africa rose from 35,000 to 87,000 in the past year.
In 80% of cyber incidents, attackers aimed primarily to steal data.
Microsoft processes over 100 trillion signals daily and blocks approximately 4.5 million new malware attempts each day.
52% of all cyberattacks with known motives are driven by extortion and ransomware as of October 22, 2025.
Espionage accounts for only 4% of cyberattacks, indicating a shift toward financially motivated cybercrime rather than state-sponsored operations as of October 22, 2025.
Phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication (MFA) can block over 99% of identity-based attacks.