Cybersecurity experts have predicted a tougher 2025 as the cyber threat landscape witnesses a significant shift. Hackers are arming themselves with sophisticated tools that could make their attacks and intrusions very ‘difficult to detect’.

Attackers are using advanced techniques, including AI, to breach systems, steal data, and compromise infrastructure without raising immediate alarms.

Parag Khurana, Country Manager, India at Barracuda Networks, said that cyberattacks could become increasingly complex, with more multi-channel, multi-stage attacks that infiltrate one platform, such as email, and then expand laterally to others.

“They will also become harder to detect as attackers invest more time and energy leveraging AI, novel tools, and techniques to help them breach systems, steal data, or compromise infrastructure without triggering any immediate alarms,” he said.

Consequently, while preventing attacks remains crucial, the future of cybersecurity demands a greater emphasis on cyber resilience. This includes implementing automated incident response and integrated, always-on security platforms that can drastically reduce the time it takes to neutralise an attack.

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“Despite a lot of hype and discussions around the tech buzzwords and emerging threats, actors will stick to classic tactics, benefitting from continued expansion in attack surfaces ,multiplicity of tools and apps and security still struggling with business conflict,” Jaydeep Ruparelia, Co-Founder of Infopercept, has said.

“Having an offensive-first security approach, we have the opportunity to emulate the exact tactics of a modern adversary. We were inspired by the thought of narrating threat predictions from an attacker’s perspective as it offers a real-world view into various attack scenarios and threats that are likely to emerge in the year to come,” he said.

“This provides security practitioners with better insights, aiding their security readiness without any bias, overall helping them narrow down their efforts and scarce resources on what will really matter,” he further added.

CaaS threat

In addition to using classic tactics, cyber baddies will benefit from a growing marketplace of stolen credentials, automated playbooks with sophisticated components, AI-enhanced attack tools and other Cybercrime-as-a-Service (CaaS) offerings on the dark web.

How to be safe

The best-protected organisations in 2025 are likely to be those that have a ‘resilient’ mindset, Khurana asserted.

In technical terms, this should include deep, multi-layered defences such as Managed Extended Detection and Response (XDR), continuous cybersecurity training, and maintaining comprehensive asset inventories,” he said.  

XDR integrates security across endpoints, networks, emails, servers, and cloud services, offering centralised visibility and proactive threat neutralisation while significantly reducing response times from hours or days to just minutes.

“Organisations also need to focus on cyber resilient governance. By leveraging freely available resources like the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 2.0 Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) they can develop an action plan for cybersecurity, including risk management, privacy, artificial intelligence (AI), and secure software design, empowering them to be better prepared to address cyber threats and recover more quickly following a cyberattack,” he said.

Cloud threats

“Not every cloud will have a silver lining, as cloud security concerns set to multiply,” Ruparelia cautions.

The top-down overhaul of business processes and customer experiences driven by cloud-native technologies will reach its next milestone and become more deeply integrated. This will raise concerns about cloud security misconfiguration, security negligence and errors, he points out.