According to one cybersecurity firm’s predictions, no: but more awareness and preparedness will be built up to prepare for ground zero…
In 2024, organizations and cybercriminal groups alike have been embedding AI into work processes in an almost arms-race fashion.
So, what can the world expect next year, as AI becomes even more critical in the war to ward off risks created by cybercriminals and state-sponsored threat actors?
According to Simon Green, President (Asia Pacific and Japan), Palo Alto Networks, “our region will face a perfect storm of AI-driven cyber threats, escalating in scale, sophistication, and impact.” As quantum attacks loom, and deepfakes become mainstream tools of deception, organizations will either innovate or risk being outpaced by adversaries, he said.
The firm has offered the following predictions for the year ahead:
- Cyber infrastructure will be converged
Next year, organizations will address increased complexity by reducing the number of cybersecurity tools in use and shifting to a unified platform, offering enhanced visibility and control. The ongoing cyber skills shortage will continue to accelerate this trend. A unified platform will provide end-to-end visibility and context, spanning code repositories, cloud workloads, networks, and security operations centers. Ultimately, this creates a more holistic security architecture with fewer dashboards. The convergence of all security layers onto a unified platform will optimize resources, improve overall efficiency, and enable organizations to build more resilient, adaptive defenses against evolving threats.
- The year deepfakes go mainstream in APAC
Deepfakes are already being used for nefarious purposes. While some have been used to spread political misinformation, the most effective attacks have targeted corporations for financial gain. Next year, savvy criminals will take note and use ever-improving generative AI technology to launch credible deepfake attacks. The use of audio deepfakes will also become more widespread in these attacks, in the form of highly credible voice cloning.
- Beyond the Quantum security hype: what to expect next year
While quantum attacks on widely used encryption methods are not yet feasible, state-sponsored threat actors are expected to intensify their “harvest now, decrypt later” tactics. This poses a risk to governments and businesses. We will likely also see state-sponsored actors target organizations developing quantum computers themselves in corporate espionage attacks.
As quantum computing continues to become a reality and potential threats loom, governments and organizations alike will rush to keep pace. This will be done by adopting quantum-resistant defenses, including quantum-resistant tunneling, comprehensive crypto data libraries, and other technologies with enhanced crypto-agility. Organizations that require high security should explore quantum key distribution as a means of ensuring secure communications.
For now, we predict CIOs can debunk any hype around this topic to the board. Though significant progress with quantum annealing has been made, military-grade encryption has still not been broken.
- Transparency will be a cornerstone for maintaining customer trust
In 2025, regional legislators’ AI focus on ethics, data protection, and transparency will remain. However, increased use of AI models will lead to greater emphasis on AI security and the integrity and reliability of the data being used.
Transparency and proactive communication about AI model mechanics — specifically regarding data collection, training datasets, and decision-making processes — will be essential for building customer trust.
- Increased focus on product integrity and supply chain security
Next year, organizations can be expected to focus more on product integrity and supply chain resilience. Specifically, they will conduct much more thorough risk assessments, consider accountability and legal implications of business outages, and review insurance arrangements.
In cloud environments, where complexity and scale amplify risks, real-time visibility has become a necessity. Expect to see a greater focus on comprehensive monitoring involving continuous tracking of both infrastructure and application performance metrics.
