Stay ahead of the cyberthreat curve
Browse our expert attack forecasts and innovations to inform the strategies, solutions, and preemptive actions that will secure your users, data, and operations.
Emerging ransomware and other malware tactics
Evolutions in DSPM, IoT/OT security, and more
The growing need for zero trust architecture and SASE
CEO Insights
CSO Predictions
Insights from CSO Deepen Desai
01
AI-powered threats and insider risks
Deepen weighs in on the rise of AI-powered social engineering, the need to secure GenAI, and the growth of insider threats.
02
Regulatory challenges and evasive malware
Deepen dives into the impact of new cyber regulations, adversary-in-the-middle attacks that can evade MFA, and encryption-less ransomware.
03
Quantum decryption and supply chain risks
Deepen lays out the importance of adopting quantum-safe cryptography and strengthening third-party risk management.
Ransomware
GenAI-driven tactics, particularly vishing, will boost ransomware success rates, and threat actors will increase their focus on high-impact targets. At the same time, ransoms will grow, and new public disclosure rules will usher in a new era of accountability, making ransomware prevention more critical than ever.
Cloud Data Security
Cloud data security will be a top priority as threat actors launch faster, bigger attacks augmented by AI/ML. New large language model (LLM) capabilities like retrieval augmented generation (RAG) may invite prompt injection attacks, putting sensitive data at risk.
Phishing
How will phishers get more victims on the hook? Better bait. Expect a year of ever-more advanced vishing, mobile device compromise, and browser-in-the-browser attacks. With the rise of readymade phishing-as-a-service campaigns, even novice anglers will be out to snag a prize catch.
Encrypted Attacks
Threat actors will exploit the meteoric rise of AI and inherent trust in key public cloud platforms like OneDrive to scale up stealthier attacks. Patient attackers will start to archive today’s encrypted assets in order to crack them open with post-quantum cryptography in the not-too-distant future.
Digital Experience Monitoring
AI assistants will become standard time-savers for IT teams, enabling them to pivot to strategically improving their users’ digital experiences. KPIs will shift accordingly, moving away from speed and number of tickets closed to emphasize improvements in user experience and productivity.
Bringing it all together with zero trust + AI
Our experts’ predictions point the arrow in one direction: AI is poised to be the top trendsetter for another year. What that will mean for organizations by the end of 2025 will depend on the proactive steps their leaders take today.
Threat actors are already exploiting AI to gain an edge in their attacks. To stay a step ahead and protect their users and data, organizations need zero trust + AI.
Zscaler enhances zero trust with AI and comprehensive insights to power more secure, efficient digital transformation.
Start a conversation today—request a custom product demo.
FAQ
The biggest cyberthreats in 2025 will follow trends in cloud adoption and AI innovation that have characterized recent years. AI-assisted phishing, especially voice phishing (vishing), and ransomware campaigns will likely hit faster and harder, and cloud-hosted data will be the target of increasingly rampant attacks. AI is expected to fuel more attacks embedded in TLS/SSL-encrypted traffic—making these threats even harder to detect and mitigate.
Insider threats will also pose a significant risk, with cybercriminals planting insiders as employees or contractors to exploit legitimate access. At the same time, ransomware is likely to see more encryption-less attacks as threat actors strive to cause minimal disruption while still extorting large payouts.
In 2025, organizations that do not adopt zero trust architecture will be increasingly vulnerable to breaches and ransomware attacks, because traditional castle-and-moat security is ineffective at protecting against evolving threats in the world of cloud and AI. By leveraging zero trust architecture with AI-powered capabilities, organizations can greatly reduce their attack surface, prevent initial compromise, eliminate lateral movement, and stop data loss.
AI has already established itself as a powerful tool for both attackers and defenders, and this trend will continue in 2025. Threat actors will continue to find novel ways to abuse AI, such as highly convincing phishing and deepfakes, as well as launch campaigns faster, at a greater scale, than before. Innovations in AI-powered cybersecurity will meet attackers head-on with intelligent threat detection and response, risk management, and more.
The industries most at risk in 2025 will be those that hold the most valuable, vulnerable data. In particular, we expect to see more attacks on the manufacturing and healthcare industries, as well as the education and energy sectors, all of which have strong ties to critical infrastructure, making them especially vulnerable to ransomware attacks.
2025 will call for greater emphasis on proactive defense strategies. Organizations must prioritize a zero trust architecture, augmented with AI-powered security controls, alongside a culture of security awareness all the way from the board and executive level to individual contributors. Aligning security with strategic planning and innovation will better position organizations to counter emerging threats in 2025 and beyond.