UK Firms Hit By Over 1,500 Cyber Attacks A Week As Ransomware Nearly Doubles Globally

UK organisations faced an average of 1,571 cyber-attacks per week each in August 2026, a 14% increase on the same month last year, according to new threat intelligence from Check Point.

While that figure sits below the global average of 2,422 weekly attacks per organisation, it confirms that UK businesses remain firmly in attackers’ sights, with education, energy and utilities, media and entertainment, government and software named as the five most targeted sectors in the country.

The UK figures form part of Check Point’s wider Global Threat Intelligence report for August, which found that cyber-attacks worldwide rose 4% month-on-month and 22% year-on-year. The report points to an escalation in risk across several fronts at once, with ransomware, phishing and GenAI-related data exposure all identified as pressing enterprise security challenges.

Education And Travel Sectors Under Pressure

Globally, education remained the most targeted sector, averaging 5,354 weekly attacks per organisation, up 28% year-on-year. Government followed with 3,067 weekly attacks, while Hospitality, Travel and Recreation climbed into third place with 3,056 weekly attacks, up 56%, as attackers appeared to capitalise on the busy summer travel period.

Regionally, Latin America recorded the highest volume of attacks at 3,577 per week, while Europe posted the fastest year-on-year growth at 28%, suggesting that cyber pressure is spreading into mature, interconnected digital economies rather than remaining concentrated in traditionally high-volume regions.

Genai Use Climbs As Data Exposure Risk Lingers

One of the report’s key findings centres on the growing use of generative AI tools inside businesses. High-risk GenAI prompts, those posing a risk of exposing sensitive data, fell to their lowest level in several months, with just one in every 43 enterprise prompts now flagged as high-risk.

At the same time, overall GenAI usage kept climbing. The average enterprise user generated 106 prompts in August, up from 95 in July and around 78 in June. Check Point notes that 86% of organisations using GenAI regularly were still affected by high-risk prompt activity at some point, and that the average organisation now uses seven different AI tools, a spread that makes consistent governance harder to maintain.

Healthcare and Medical organisations recorded the highest exposure rate of any sector, at 4% of prompts, followed by Software at 3.6% and Business Services at 3.5%. The data most commonly exposed in GenAI prompts related to network and IT infrastructure, financial data and legal or regulatory information, underlining how far AI-related risk now extends across core business functions rather than sitting at the margins.

Phishing And Ransomware Both On The Rise

Email remained a favoured route into organisations, with one in every 112 emails classified as phishing in August, up from one in 128 in July. Links featured in 72% of phishing emails, while 14% carried malicious attachments.

Ransomware activity accelerated sharply, too. Check Point recorded 1,042 ransomware attacks globally in August, almost double the number seen in August 2025 and 8% higher than July. Business Services bore the brunt, accounting for 36% of reported attacks, ahead of Industrial Manufacturing at 13% and Consumer Goods and Services at 12%. The United Kingdom featured among the countries most affected by ransomware during the month, behind the United States, Germany and Italy.

Qilin was the most active ransomware group in August, responsible for 15% of published attacks, followed by The Gentlemen at 10%. Orova, a group that only surfaced publicly in May 2026, broke into the top three for the first time with 4% of attacks, most of them concentrated among small and mid-sized businesses.

Barnaby Nickels, Head of Sales, Exposure Management, UKI & North EU at Check Point, said: “August’s data shows cyber risk expanding across several fronts at once. With attacks climbing, ransomware accelerating, phishing remaining a common entry point and GenAI creating a new route for data exposure, security teams cannot rely on fragmented defences.”

He added that organisations need proactive detection and validation of threats, alongside a focus on cutting remediation times, warning that the window attackers have to exploit a vulnerability is shrinking fast.

For UK businesses, the message from Check Point’s latest figures is consistent with the broader global picture: attack volumes, ransomware and AI-related data exposure are all rising together, and the company is urging organisations to move toward a prevention-first strategy that gives consistent visibility across users, email, networks, cloud environments and AI tools.