Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2025

[Audio] Today I'll walk you through the key insights from the Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2025. This report brings together global perspectives from the World Economic Forum and Accenture, and it highlights the major forces shaping cybersecurity this year. We'll focus on nine trends that are reshaping risk, resilience, and strategy. Let's start by looking at what's driving this complexity..

[Audio] Cybersecurity is becoming more complex than ever. We're seeing geopolitical tensions, rapid adoption of new technologies, and expanding regulatory demands all happening at once. This creates an unpredictable and opaque threat landscape. And many organizations are still relying on legacy security models that simply can't keep up. This complexity doesn't affect everyone equally and that's where cyber inequity comes in..

[Audio] The gap between large and small organizations is widening. Small organizations increasingly feel they can't keep up — 35% now say their resilience is inadequate. The public sector is also struggling, especially with talent shortages. And because ecosystems are interconnected, this inequity weakens everyone, not just the smaller players. One area where this inequity becomes especially visible is in supply chain security..

[Audio] Supply chain risk has become the top ecosystem concern. More than half of large organizations say third‑party risk management is their biggest challenge. Software vulnerabilities introduced by suppliers can spread quickly across networks. And many organizations still lack visibility into the security posture of their partners. But supply chains aren't the only pressure point geopolitics is reshaping cyber strategy too..

[Audio] Nearly 60% of organizations say geopolitical tensions have influenced their cybersecurity strategy. CEOs tend to worry most about espionage and intellectual property theft. CISOs, on the other hand, focus more on operational disruption. This difference in priorities can create misalignment at the leadership level. On top of that, rapid AI adoption is introducing a whole new set of vulnerabilities..

[Audio] AI is expected to have the biggest impact on cybersecurity in 2025. But adoption is outpacing governance only 37% of organizations assess the security of AI tools before deploying them. This creates an 'AI paradox': everyone sees the risk, but very few have safeguards in place. And AI isn't just helping defenders it's also supercharging cybercriminals..

[Audio] Generative AI is dramatically boosting adversary capabilities. We're seeing more sophisticated phishing, deepfakes, and multilingual social engineering attacks. In fact, 42% of organizations experienced a successful social engineering attack last year. Attackers are using AI faster and more creatively than defenders can respond. As all this unfolds, organizations are also navigating a growing maze of regulations..

[Audio] Regulations do help improve baseline resilience. But the problem is fragmentation different jurisdictions, different rules, different expectations. More than 76% of CISOs say this complexity makes compliance difficult. Organizations are spending more time interpreting regulations than implementing security. Even with strong regulations, none of this works without the right people — and that's where the skills gap hits hard..

[Audio] The cyber skills gap continues to widen. Two‑thirds of organizations report moderate to critical talent shortages. Only 14% feel they have the people and skills they need. And as AI and cloud technologies evolve, the demand for specialized skills keeps rising. All of these factors feed into one final trend: the rising sophistication of cybercrime..

[Audio] Cybercrime is becoming more advanced, more organized, and more scalable. Ransomware remains the top threat globally. Cybercrime‑as‑a‑Service has lowered the barrier to entry, allowing anyone to launch attacks. And traditional organized crime groups are now merging with cybercriminal networks. AI is accelerating fraud, identity theft, and phishing at a scale we've never seen before. Together, these nine trends show just how fast the cyber landscape is evolving and why resilience has never been more important..