10 Cybersecurity Predictions for 2025: Mounting Ransomware, Growing AI Risk

The good and bad of AI, more organized ransomware operations and new hackers are among cybersecurity predictions for 2025.

Cybercriminals once again upped their game in 2024, attacking hospitals and other health care organizations, telecom giants, supply chains and more. For example, AT&T disclosed a massive data breach that impacted nearly all of the carrier’s cellular customers, as well as non-customers on its network.

Expect 2025 to be just as challenging, if not more, for cyber defenders.

Cybersecurity Predictions Led by AI 

Elia Zaitsev, CrowdStrike’s CTO, said AI security will dictate innovation in 2025.

“AI is transformative, and its evolution is unfolding rapidly across public and private clouds,” he said. “As adversaries increasingly target AI services and large language models (LLMs) deployed in these environments, protecting the integrity and performance of AI systems is more critical than ever. The data driving these models, and the applications they power, must be safeguarded against sophisticated threats. To secure AI innovation in the cloud, security teams will need specialized technology and services that monitor AI services and LLMs, detect misconfigurations, and identify and address vulnerabilities, unified with protection across the entire cloud estate, from infrastructure and applications to data.”

Related:2025 Cloud Computing Predictions: 6 Big Trends to Watch

CrowdStrike's Elia Zaitsev

Consolidation will once again be a central focus for security in 2025, Zaitsev said.

“The current threat landscape is too dynamic to leave infrastructure vulnerable to threat actors who have been known to exploit gaps in point solutions,” he said. “That’s why security teams will continue to prioritize the elimination of complexity and costs associated with a patchwork of point solutions. A cloud- and AI-native platform approach with threat intelligence built natively within is the only way to supercharge the convergence of security and IT, helping organizations to remain agile and secure. The integration of generative AI into security platforms will further accelerate this trend by significantly reducing alert-to-resolution times and transforming hours of work into mere minutes, enhancing both the speed and effectiveness of response and remediation efforts.”

See our slideshow above for the cybersecurity predictions experts say channel partners should keep apprised of in 2025 so they can help their customers avoid a cyber disaster.