Acronis warns awareness gap leaves users open to hacks

Acronis has published research highlighting a gap between cybersecurity awareness and everyday user behaviour. The findings point to persistent weaknesses in basic security habits despite broader public understanding of common cyber risks.

Data cited by Acronis shows phishing accounted for 83% of all email threats in the second half of 2025, while advanced attacks on collaboration platforms rose from 12% in 2024 to 31% in 2025. Separate consumer research found that 35% of people do not back up their data regularly.

The figures were released as cybersecurity groups continue to push for stronger day-to-day online safety practices, including multifactor authentication, unique passwords and regular backups. Acronis argued that awareness campaigns have improved recognition of cyber risks, but that those gains have not consistently translated into user action.

Threat shift

Attackers are broadening the channels they use to reach targets. Email remains the main route, but the rise in attacks through collaboration tools points to a wider shift towards workplace platforms used for messaging, file sharing and internal communication.

For managed service providers, phishing remained the leading entry point for attacks, accounting for 52% of incidents, according to the Acronis Cyberthreats Report H2 2025. The report also found that email-based attacks increased year on year by 16% per organisation and 20% per user.

Acronis said cybercriminals are using artificial intelligence to scale established methods such as phishing, impersonation, social engineering and ransomware, rather than relying on entirely new techniques. That is making familiar threats harder to spot, particularly as attackers produce more convincing messages at greater volume.

Behaviour gap

Against that backdrop, user habits remain inconsistent. Acronis's Data Privacy Report 2025 found that 68% of consumers say they use strong, unique passwords and 46% have adopted two-factor authentication.

Even so, the same research found that 30% of consumers consider security tools too difficult to use, while more than a third do not back up data regularly. Acronis said the findings suggest convenience and usability continue to shape security decisions as much as awareness of risk.

The research also highlighted differences across age groups. Users under 35 reported more data breaches than those aged 55 to 64, despite being generally more comfortable with digital tools.

That points to a recurring issue for security teams and policymakers: knowing best practice does not always lead to safer behaviour. Password reuse remains one example. Acronis cited Cybernews research showing that only 6% of passwords are unique, leaving many users exposed to credential stuffing and password cracking.

Awareness limits

The debate over the value of awareness campaigns has intensified as AI tools make cyberattacks easier to produce and harder to detect. In material published by Acronis, Sam Altman, Chief Executive Officer of OpenAI, was quoted from an earlier BBC interview saying, "It doesn't take as much imagination as it used to for [us] to imagine how this could go wrong."

He added: "I think the world is right to be afraid of this."

Acronis used that warning to frame a broader argument that awareness efforts still matter, but only if they change routine behaviour. The objective, it said, should be to build a stronger security culture in homes and workplaces rather than treat awareness as a once-a-year exercise.

That argument reflects a wider shift in the cybersecurity industry towards behavioural risk management. Companies are placing more emphasis on repeated staff training, phishing simulations and simpler security controls in an effort to reduce the gap between knowing what to do and doing it consistently.

The Acronis findings suggest the problem is not a lack of public exposure to security advice, but the persistence of habits that leave users vulnerable. Reused passwords, delayed software updates, weak backup routines and inconsistent use of multifactor authentication continue to create openings for attackers.

As collaboration platforms become a bigger target and AI reshapes the scale of phishing and impersonation attempts, those weak points are likely to remain under scrutiny. For businesses, service providers and individual users, the figures underline the same message: basic cyber hygiene remains uneven even as threats grow more sophisticated.

Awareness only strengthens security when it becomes consistent behaviour.