It’s that time of year when we talk about what’s happened over the past 12 months in the global cybersecurity arena and what 2025 has in store for us.
Generative AI has been reshaping digital threats this year, as attackers increasingly use the resource to craft convincing scams and malware. On the other hand, security software providers have also begun to harness the power of AI to fight back against new threats.
We cannot talk about 2024 without communicating about knowledge violations. These incidents reached an all-time high in that period, and what has been called “the mother of all knowledge breaches” began the year with 26 billion breached records. More than one billion records have been exposed in the last 12 months, to NordLayer’s knowledge.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at our five most sensible cybersecurity predictions to look out for in 2025.
“In 2025, I expect AI to have a double effect on cybersecurity: increased productivity and increased risk,” said Dror Liwer, co-founder of cybersecurity company Coro. “
For instance, he explains, attackers could infiltrate AI chatbots to access the private data you willingly share through your inputs to the large language models (LLMs). Attackers will also keep using generative AI to write better malware, build fake shops, and spread other digital scams.
At the same time, security vendors are expected to continue their efforts to harness the power of AI to combat AI-imposed threats.
On this point, Eyal Benishti, founder and CEO of cloud messaging service Ironscales, said: “Right now, risk actors around the world are a few steps ahead. By 2025, we can only hope that hard paints and innovation among cybersecurity developers will close this gap. “
The encryption conundrum is also expected to dominate next year. On the one hand, the US government is urging citizens to switch to encrypted messaging following an unprecedented attack on the country’s telecommunications. At the same time, law enforcement continues to look for tactics to establish backdoors to prevent criminals, such as the debatable Chat Control in the EU.
“We see 2025 as a decisive year politically,” Jan Jonsson, CEO of Mullvad VPN, told TechRadar. “There are forces seeking to erase personal and secure communications through legal access, and other people want to be aware of this and the consequences this has for free and open societies. “
Privacy experts, cryptographers, encrypted messaging providers, and other technologists have long denounced threats of encryption breaches—that is, the combining of knowledge into an unreadable form to save unwanted arrays.
We can expect this promotion to be accentuated next year as anti-encryption legislation gains traction around the world.
As mentioned above, generative AI is helping criminals design more convincing attacks, namely phishing emails – malicious messages designed to trick you into clicking on a harmful link or offering sensitive non-public information. That’s why experts expect that by 2025 scammers will become more and more creative.
According to Shai Mael, director and global sales engineer at Ironscales, risky actors are expected to resort to artistic methods of social engineering to carry out identity theft and other bureaucratic attacks.
He said: “We’re already beginning to see a growing number of voicemail phishing attacks, as well as attacks in which malicious links are being embedded in email attachments – both of which are proving to be some of the most effective phishing strategies in use today.”
Although some security providers have begun to offer more complex coverage against scams (the new NordVPN Threat Protection Pro has been named one of the most productive malware and phishing protection kits), you remain on guard at all times because your judgment critical will still be your maximum. tough weapon against phishing in 2025.
Once again, usage of the best VPN apps has skyrocketed in the last 12 months. Users around the world have turned to this flexible security software for a variety of reasons, in addition to dealing with stricter online restrictions, protecting their knowledge from third-party surveillance, or simply improving their overall Internet experience.
A virtual personal network (VPN) lends itself to many other uses. It encrypts all the data that leaves your device while spoofing your real IP address to make it look like you’re browsing from a location with just a few clicks.
While AI threats, knowledge leaks, and other privacy risks are expected to increase, experts expect VPN usage to continue to rise in 2025 as well.
Commenting on this point, Lauren Hendry Parsons, Digital Rights expert at ExpressVPN, told TechRadar: “As concerns about online privacy continue to grow, I believe we’ll see even more people and businesses turn to VPNs for protection.”
Preparing for post-quantum cryptography is one of the trends that, according to Google’s Cybersecurity Forecast 2025, will shape the future of cybersecurity in the new year.
With the full implementation of quantum computing expected to kick off between 2030 and 2035, it’s just a matter of time before current encryption methods become obsolete – potentially broken by the ability of these machines to process computations that today’s computers can’t handle, within minutes.
That’s why the cybersecurity industry has already started thinking about a post-quantum world. In 2024, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) officially published its first 3 quantum-resistant encryption standards. In 2025, The NIST paintings are expected to continue and software providers that use encryption such as VPNs, secure messaging and messaging applications will increasingly put post-quantum cryptography into effect alongside classical protections.
Chiara is a multimedia journalist committed to covering stories to help promote the rights and denounce the abuses of the digital side of life—wherever cybersecurity, markets and politics tangle up. She mainly writes news, interviews and analysis on data privacy, online censorship, digital rights, cybercrime, and security software, with a special focus on VPNs, for TechRadar Pro, TechRadar and Tom’s Guide. Got a story, tip-off or something tech-interesting to say? Reach out to [email protected]
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