“2025 is the first year where we’ll genuinely see the second phase of AI in action with security.” Sunil Potti, VP and GM, Google Cloud Security.
After a year of record-breaking cyber activity around the world, 2025 promises to be an even more frenetic year. But as experts will tell you, cybersecurity isn’t just about reacting to attacks—it’s about anticipating them and staying one step ahead. In 2025, preparedness will be more crucial than ever—and tested like never before—by a litany of threats that are only becoming more powerful thanks to AI. The global cost of cyberattacks could reach $12 trillion next year¹, a staggering number that would rank as the world’s third-largest economy and speaks to the dire need for organizations to better protect applications and business assets. This number is driven by the growing power of AI, which is proving to be a double-edged sword, offering new capabilities for threat actors and security teams, alike. As cybersecurity and regulations evolve, the following predictions offer insights to help organizations better prepare for another year in our rapidly changing threat landscape:
- Cybercrime will be supercharged with AI amid rising international tensions and another record-breaking year of third-party breaches. It means more attacks, faster exploits, and constantly evolving threats. An increasing share of these attacks will be the work of nation-state attackers, targeting critical infrastructure and undermining organizations with increasingly sophisticated deepfakes and malware. The race to identify vulnerabilities and close gaps will accelerate: The average time-to-exploit was five days this year, a drop of 84% from the previous year².
Prediction: Security teams will fight fire with fire by adopting AI-powered tooling to accelerate their cyber preparedness capabilities.
- AI becomes indispensable in security as semi-autonomous operations advance to an intermediate stage of business maturity. The next phase of AI in action will see security organizations embrace AI capabilities to improve traditionally labor-intensive workflows, risk prioritization, and mitigation planning. However, implementation challenges—such as the complexity of integrations and persistent concerns about accurate outputs—must still be managed and overcome to derisk adoption.
Prediction: AI capabilities will be made more approachable and productive in cybersecurity stacks as user-friendly tools (such as modern threat modeling) gain traction with organizations.
- Cybersecurity becomes crucial to enterprise-wide risk management programs as regulators view cyber risk and business risk synonymously. The perceived severity of security threats has surged among risk and compliance teams, becoming the number one risk driver for organizations³. New regulations are also expanding CISOs’ legal exposure, forcing businesses to better clarify roles and responsibilities⁴. To keep pace, organizations will prioritize cultivating a security-first culture, from C-suite leadership to front-line application teams.
Prediction: Organizations will continue to evolve their governance and risk management policies, expand the role of CISOs, and strengthen collaboration between security, operations, and applications teams.
- Regulatory pressures intensify to hold suppliers accountable for vulnerabilities, spurring reconsiderations around app security. Governments worldwide are sharpening their focus on cybersecurity with regulations to protect personal data, safeguard critical infrastructure, and tighten software supply chains. These regulations will compel organizations to thoroughly vet their software supplier partnerships as attackers target the weakest links in supply chains. In addition, stricter laws on data privacy will force businesses to uphold new regulations and integrate compliance requirements into their application development efforts.
Prediction: Organizations will double down on secure-by-design development to minimize risk and keep pace with evolving regulations and compliance standards.
- The democratization of security capabilities builds momentum to solve the skills gap and shortage of cybersecurity professionals. The global shortfall of nearly 4 million cybersecurity professionals⁵ looms especially large in light of the growing sophistication of threats. Reinforcements for overloaded security teams will come with an AI-enabled wave of DIY security tools for non-practitioners, including development teams.
Prediction: Organizations will adopt more self-service tools and decentralize select security tasks into a shared responsibility model where applicable. Amid all these trends, trust will be an even greater differentiator with customers and partners. As dynamic and challenging as the threat landscape has become, security and DevOps professionals can pursue simple but powerful measures to shore up their organizations’ defenses:
- Implement continuous threat modeling: The best way to combat cybercrime is through prevention. Intelligent threat modeling tools lighten the burden of security teams by automating the work of building models, visualizing architectures, and identifying relevant threats, as well as providing guidance on mitigation strategies and security controls.
- Democratize cybersecurity through education and empowerment: A security-first culture starts with an organization’s leadership but requires buy-in from everyone. That means facilitating effective, efficient collaboration between security and application teams to embed secure-by-design practices into development pipelines.
Next year will be busier than ever for security teams, but they don’t have to go it alone. A robust threat modeling solution can minimize exposure, reduce the burden, and bolster app security postures amid another record-breaking year of cyber activity. Book a demo now with a ThreatModeler expert to discover how to safeguard your customers’ applications and trust in today’s dynamic threat landscape. Sources
- Forrester, Predictions 2025: Security And Risk Pros Will Brace For Regulations And Resilience, Oct 2024
- Google, Google Cybersecurity Forecast 2025, Dec 2024
- Risk & Insurance, Cybersecurity and Related AI Risks Top 2024 Concerns of Risk Professionals, Nov 2024
- Gartner, Gartner Top Cybersecurity Predictions for 2025 and Beyond, Nov 2024
- World Economic Forum, Strategic Cybersecurity Talent Framework, April 2024