New figures from Check Point’s Global Threat Intelligence report show that cyberattacks on UK organisations are rising at a significantly faster pace than elsewhere in the world. While UK firms experienced fewer attacks overall in February, the year‑on‑year increase reached 36 per cent, compared with a 9.8 per cent global rise.
The report revealed that organisations worldwide faced an average of 2,086 attacks per week, while UK businesses saw 1,504 weekly attacks. Although this places the UK below the global average, the rapid acceleration is viewed as an increasingly serious concern. Education, energy and utilities, government, healthcare and financial services were among the UK’s most frequently targeted sectors.
Analysts noted that the surge does not appear to stem from a single driver. Instead, the UK may be experiencing what researchers describe as a “regression towards the mean”, with regions that historically saw fewer attacks now facing similar volumes to hotspots elsewhere. They also warned that short‑term and large‑scale campaigns could be contributing to the sharp rise.
Ransomware remains one of the most pressing threats. Of all corporate ransomware victims last month, 51 per cent were in the United States, with the UK standing as the third most affected country at 3 per cent, just behind Canada at 6 per cent. The report recorded 49 ransomware groups operating globally, with Qilin, Clop and The Gentlemen responsible for a significant share of known victims
The findings also highlighted risks associated with generative AI in corporate environments. One in every 31 GenAI prompts posed a high risk of data exposure, affecting 88 per cent of organisations using these tools. Sensitive information such as customer data, credentials and intellectual property appeared in 16 per cent of prompts. With organisations using an average of 11 different GenAI tools, and the average employee generating 62 prompts per month, the likelihood of accidental data leakage is increasing.
Despite these rising risks, the UK still fares better than other regions in terms of total attack volume. Latin America recorded the highest average number of weekly attacks at 3,123, followed by the Asia‑Pacific region at 3,040, and Africa at 2,993. That said, experts caution that a lower volume does not diminish the urgency of responding to the UK’s much steeper growth curve.
The overall picture suggests that UK organisations, while not yet facing the highest attack volumes globally, are entering a period of heightened threat. This is made more complex by rapid technological adoption, evolving ransomware ecosystems and the widespread, ungoverned use of generative AI tools. For many businesses, especially those in essential services, the findings serve as a clear call to strengthen security governance, improve detection capabilities and revisit incident‑readiness plans.