Maturity of deep-fake technologies will continue to accelerate in disinformation and cybercriminal operations, further diminishing trust in digital channels. Organisations will initially respond with, usually futile, detections to then pivot towards new authentication mechanisms that will redefine boundaries of trust.
AI will reduce time-to-exploitation for new vulnerabilities, pushing organisations to rethink approaches for resiliency as patching before exploitation becomes inadequate. Organisations will need to rearchitect key systems, to increase their ability to isolate and remediate at pace without disrupting business processes (potentially with the aid of AI).
Geopolitical developments and cyber warfare will significantly impact the cyber threat landscape, continuing the pattern of increased convergence between the cyber and geopolitical ecosystems. Malicious actors will continue to operate with political partisanship, with cybercriminal groups aligning on either side of the geopolitical dispute.
Some organisations will evolve the CISO role with increasing responsibilities – into the Chief Digital Security, Risk, and Resilience Officer or Chief Security and Resilience Officer.
Ransomware continues to evolve, and managing multi-cloud security complexity requires unified solutions. Adequate protection isn’t just about staff training—it starts at the top. At EtonHouse, we’ve kicked off the year with cyber training for our board and management, reinforcing a security culture from leadership to frontline staff. Proactivity is critical in 2025.
In payments, identity is the new encryption, setting standards for secure, seamless transactions. Biometric authentication, like fingerprint or facial recognition, offers improved security and convenience, displacing traditional authentication methods.
Learn more here:
IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Security and Trust 2025 Predictions — Asia Pacific (Excluding Japan) Implications
AI-Powered Cybersecurity: Navigating the Expanding Attack Landscape, Asia/Pacific CISO’s Concerns, Priorities and Investment Areas, and Strategic Vendor Support
Meanwhile, hyperscalers are achieving new breakthroughs in their AI research – particularly in the agentic workflow and AGI, creating the next wave of AI capabilities. All businesses will be busy figuring out how to capitalise AI capabilities to achieve productivity gains by displacing white collar roles to cut costs and improve profitability in an increasingly volatile market.
However, the cyber criminals will also increasingly deploy these AI capabilities (since they don’t have much to lose or restricted by regulation to do AI Security testing) to generate more real-world impact and bring forth a new generation of smarter AI-enabled attacks.
Zero Trust as a Standard: Adoption will extend into OT, IoT, and cloud ecosystems, driven by regulatory and operational demands.
Resilience Amid Complexity: Cyber resilience will become a board-level priority, emphasizing recovery and continuity.
Global Regulations: Stricter rules on AI and data privacy will challenge organizations to stay compliant.
Collaborative Security: Increased industry partnerships for intelligence sharing and tackling supply chain vulnerabilities.