2025

Critical national infrastructure (CNI) has had a rough 2024 in the UK when it comes to cybercrime. From the chaos caused by a teenager who hacked into TfL to the dangerous impact on the NHS after the Synnovis breach. And let us not forget the ongoing fallout from the Sellafield breach in December 2023.

These are just a few of the notable cases of a much wider problem, with Bridewell finding that 60 percent of UK CNI organizations experiencing at least one ransomware attack over the past 12 months.

In 2024, opposing nation-states have utilized cyberattacks to project power and disruption from within their own borders. This shift has been epitomized by the rise of the “Axis of Upheaval,” dominated by the CRINKs nations -- China, Russia, Iran, North Korea -- who share a common reliance on using cyberattacks to wreak havoc in an affordable manner.

Whether it’s North Korea using ransomware to generate revenue for its isolated regime, or Russia focusing on disrupting and eroding public trust in democratic institutions, each state is finding its niche to cause harm. Despite these varied goals and techniques, it’s the same sectors again and again in the crosshairs. Whether it’s CNI, healthcare, or finance, these organizations now must protect against a wide range of attack styles and techniques.

As we navigate an increasingly digital landscape, the threats posed by cybercriminals are evolving at an alarming pace. The latest predictions highlight a future where AI-driven technologies, particularly deep fakes, will become more sophisticated, making it challenging for individuals and organizations to distinguish between genuine and malicious entities.

This article explores three critical predictions regarding the future of cyber threats: the rise of hyper-realistic deep fakes, the escalation of browser-based ransomware attacks targeting essential infrastructure, and the growing risk of insider threats in remote work environments. Understanding these trends is crucial for developing effective strategies to safeguard against the next wave of cybercrime.

Sophisticated AI-Driven Deepfakes Will Bypass Traditional Security Measures

As 2024 comes to an end, we expect to see a new year of innovation and greater adoption of new technologies and an increase in cybersecurity vulnerabilities for businesses. As such the sophistication of cyber security threats will likely rise in 2025 and the proliferation of technologies such as AI will make organizations more prone to falling victim to threat actors.

This is set to be impacted by the cyber skill shortage of 2024 which has been a challenging year with budget cutbacks and layoffs. Other trends that we expect to see are highlighted below.  

You close out one year, looking for a fresh start on the next. But old content doesn’t just disappear when you hang up a new calendar. There’s always a chance of something in previous data reemerging to challenge the plans you have for the upcoming year. While nothing can completely counter that possibility, enterprise search can help keep tabs on all information, past and present, to mitigate such a risk.

Enterprise search enables instant concurrent searching across terabytes after first indexing the data. A single index can hold up to a terabyte, and there are no limits on the number of indexes enterprise search can create and end-users simultaneously query.

As we approach the end of the year it's time to start wondering what the next one will have in store. As always we'll be running a series of pieces looking at what industry experts think will be key tech industry trends for 2025.

We start with a look at quantum, which is getting ever closer to widespread commercial deployment and could open up great opportunities but is also leading to increasing fears about security.

2024 has been a year of seismic change in the UK, what with a new government coming into power and a budget that will undoubtedly impact the UK’s small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in 2025. So, as we look ahead to next year, what technology trends will lead?

We see several dominant trends: a larger proportion of the workforce returning to the office, the increasing adoption of AI, and a heightened focus on security. Additionally, data sovereignty issues will come to the forefront as organizations worry about where their data resides, and ever-growing compliance requirements will become a business necessity -- no matter the organization's size.

At the dawn of a new year most people plan to make lifestyle changes like losing weight or giving up smoking. But new research commissioned by Tech Show London reveals that over 12 million UK consumers plan to make learning AI a New Year's resolution for 2025.

This growing interest in mastering AI signals a shift towards greater understanding and engagement with the technology that is increasingly shaping our lives. 46 percent of those surveyed agree that AI will fundamentally transform our relationship with technology.

While enterprise AI adoption boomed in 2024, 45 percent of US employees fear their company does not categorize AI applications based on the risk of potential harm to employees and customers. In the year ahead, business leaders must contend with the real data privacy and intellectual property risks that generative AI poses and chart a more pragmatic path forward.

Here are four trends I see shaping the enterprise technology landscape in 2025:

As we approach 2025, the notion of warfare is increasingly shifting from the physical to the digital domain. Cyberwarfare, once considered a supplementary tool for traditional military operations, has now emerged as a primary weapon for nations seeking to assert dominance or inflict damage on their adversaries without the need for physical conflict. Simply put, it is easier, requires fewer resources, and can often cause maximum damage without sustained efforts. The rise of AI-driven cyber weapons, zero-day vulnerabilities, and state-sponsored cyberattacks is creating an unprecedented era of digital warfare.

Nation-states and rogue factions are rapidly integrating cyberattacks into their military arsenals, with cyber operations becoming a first-strike option in geopolitical conflicts. By targeting critical infrastructure -- such as energy grids, communication networks, transportation systems, and supply chains -- these attacks can cripple an entire national infrastructure and create mass chaos without a single physical shot being fired. This shift toward cyber warfare reduces the immediate risk of physical casualties, and in turn allows state actors to engage in asymmetric warfare, where a smaller, technologically advanced nation can punch well above its weight.

Gartner predicts that public cloud end-user spending will surpass $675 billion by the end of 2024. In 2025, as AI systems proliferate and organizations increasingly store sensitive data in public cloud infrastructure, many stakeholders will begin demanding more robust cloud security measures.

Additionally, cybercriminals are becoming more inventive than ever. They now rely on AI and machine learning (ML) to improve and iterate on their methods, just as we all do. Interestingly, despite advances in cloud security, research suggests that common vulnerabilities like unenforced multi-factor authentication (MFA) and long-lived credentials continue to expose many companies to risk. Patching these known vulnerabilities will be crucial next year.

A new study by the IEEE -- the world's largest technical professional organization -- focuses on on what are likely to be the most important technologies in 2025 along with future technology trends, including expectations for AI's market growth, benefits, uses, and skill sets.

The study surveyed over 350 CIOs, CTOs, IT directors, and other technology leaders in Brazil, China, India, the UK and US at organizations with more than 1,000 employees, it finds that 58 percent believe AI will be the most important tech next year, while 26 percent say cloud computing and 24 percent robotics.

Microsoft announced last week that it won’t release new feature updates for its Windows 10 operating system anymore. Windows 10 version 22H2, released in late 2022, is therefor the last major version of Windows 10.

The operating system won’t receive new (major) features anymore and Microsoft will focus its engineering energy on Windows 11 and potential successors. It is unclear whether smaller changes will still find their way into the operating system. Many of these, if they happens, may introduce changes that most users may not want.