Barracuda: Organisations That Delay Responding to Email Breaches Are 79% More Likely to Suffer a Ransomware Hit
97% Reported an Impact from a Breach, with Brand Reputation Damage (40%) and Business Disruption (40%) Most Common
Barracuda Networks, Inc., a leading cybersecurity company providing complete protection against complex threats for businesses of all sizes, has released new research showing that APAC organisations taking longer than nine hours to address an email security breach have a 79% chance of also being a victim of ransomware.
The new Barracuda Email Security Breach Report 2025 was produced in partnership with research firm Vanson Bourne, which surveyed 2,000 IT and security leaders globally—including 600 respondents from across Asia-Pacific.
The report reveals that most of the APAC organisations surveyed (77%) had experienced an email breach in the previous 12 months, with the average cost to recover reaching USD $224,094, and nearly all respondents (97%) reporting tangible or intangible impacts ranging from downtime to reputational harm.
Email Breach and Ransomware
Within APAC, brand and company reputation damage (40%), business disruption (40%), and loss of employee productivity (39%) are the top three consequences of a breach, underlining how far-reaching the effects can be beyond immediate financial loss.
The survey also shows that despite the need for rapid incident detection and response, many companies struggle to achieve this. Nearly half (46%) of APAC respondents say that email threats are becoming harder to detect due to advanced evasion techniques, while 47% attribute delays to the lack of automated incident response to identify and contain attacks efficiently. A further 40% note a shortage of skilled security staff as a limiting factor.
“Email security is no longer just about stopping spam or mass phishing—it’s about preventing the first domino from falling in a cyber threat chain that could end in operational paralysis, data loss, reputational damage, and longer-term business impacts,” said Neal Bradbury, Chief Product Officer at Barracuda. “Responding quickly and effectively to email breaches is critical to overall cyber resilience. This can be a challenge for many organisations. The findings show that the ability to detect and neutralise email incidents is often hampered by increasingly complex and evasive attacks, internal skills shortages, a lack of automation, and more. A unified approach to protection centred on a strong integrated security platform is vital.”
“Across Asia-Pacific, we’re seeing organisations face the dual challenge of increasingly sophisticated email threats and a shortage of skilled security professionals to manage them,” said Mark Lukie, Director of Solutions Architects, Barracuda APAC. “Many businesses still underestimate how quickly an email breach can escalate into a much larger incident, such as ransomware. Speed and automation are crucial—yet almost half of APAC respondents still rely heavily on manual processes. Building cyber resilience means investing not just in technology, but also in visibility, training, and coordinated response capabilities that allow teams to act fast when it matters most.”
