5 IT Security Trends to Watch in 2025 and Beyond

IT is truly one of the most constantly and rapidly advancing fields. Few niches within IT can outpace the constant sprint that is security. For the IT pros, our skills and awareness of the security landscape must be constantly sharpened—because the bad guys are always looking for new ways to attack our users and systems.

The odds are stacked against us. There are more bad actors than good, and they typically work in countries where legal action is unlikely. Companies that are hacked can face stiff fines and public backlash for not sufficiently protecting customer data. No need to fear, though; new attacks are typically built upon old ones, so a combination of brushing up on past security trends as well as looking ahead to new ones will get you up to speed.

2025 will surely see its fair share of emerging trends, so let's examine the top five security trends to watch this year.

1. AI-Powered Threats

If 2024 taught us anything, it's that AI might stick around for a while. But it won't just be used by the good guys to protect. The bad guys use it to attack, and as it continues to evolve, those attacks will only get worse.

Generative AI voice and video scams are among the most significant concerns. While it's one thing for a spammer to sign an email as your CEO, it's another to receive a voicemail or video call from an AI impersonating their voice or appearance. But phony emails aren't going away; if anything, they'll get worse. AI can write them, targeting specifics about the business, leaders, or even yourself to craft a more convincing phish.

Another area where AI is creating havoc is malware, especially zero-day threats. AI can automate vulnerability discovery, finding flaws faster than conventional systems can be patched. The same AI that generates the malware can also control it in real-time, evading detection and navigating across networks to establish a stronger foothold. Organizations must adopt AI-driven tools to counter these new threats, effectively pitting the bots against each other in a kind of virtual Robot Wars.

2. Supply Chain Risks

Third-party vendors, dependencies, and hardware will continue to grow as targets for criminals, and with this comes the increased possibility of a weaponized supply chain. Software supply chain attacks are becoming more common as hackers inject malicious code into open-source apps and libraries. Once compromised, this code can spread across thousands of networks before being detected, even though the source is "trusted."

To fight these attacks, organizations can adopt Software Bills of Materials (SBOM) to track software components and detect vulnerabilities before they become a problem. These docs contain an application's components, libraries, and dependencies. They provide needed transparency into what that app you're installing actually contains. When new vulnerabilities are announced, you can easily identify if you might be affected and fix issues faster. 

A US executive order actually identified enhancing supply chain security as a necessary step in preventing these attacks, both for government software and with recommendations for the private sector.

3. Zero Trust Maturity and Expansion

This year, zero trust must move beyond basic implementations to a core security practice. If this is an unfamiliar concept, it means authenticating users not just at the edge of the network but at every step within the network to continuously verify their identity.

The key to zero trust maturation must be a focus on the cloud, with continuous verification at every layer of cloud infrastructure. These models must enforce strict access controls to ensure every user and device is authenticated. 

Other key tactics will include segmenting environments more granularly to limit lateral movement, more widely using role-based access controls (RBAC) to enforce minimum necessary permissions for all apps and data to limit access that users receive, and broadly implementing continuous monitoring of user and system activity. 

This monitoring can use automation to block access when it detects anomalous behavior. Such policies and automation are key to locking down large environments with the limited resources and staff we typically have.

4. Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) Evolution

Everything's available as-a-service these days; why should hackers be left out? You, too, can engage in illegal activities for a low monthly fee! Seriously though, this is a real thing: RaaS providers make it easy for anyone to launch their own ransomware campaign. They do the dirty work of generating malware, sending it to your targets, running C&C servers and payment portals on your half, and managing decryption keys, all for a cut of the ransom profits.

While ransomware is nothing new, organizations must constantly keep their guard up as the threats continue to grow in complexity and volume. Governments, cybersecurity researchers, and defensive software can only move fast to keep up. The protective layers of endpoint protection, spam filtering, disaster response planning, and user training must all work together to keep our organizations safe.

Similarly, DDoS-as-a-Service is another maturing black hat business model. The bad guys exploit out-of-date hardware to install malware in mass across the Internet. Anyone can then pay for access to these botnets to run DDoS attacks on targets of their choosing. 

You can do everything possible to keep malware out of your environment, but being DDoSed is a whole other beast. Mitigation requires a solid strategy built around CDNs, WAFs, and cloud DDoS protection services.

5. Quantum-Resistant Cryptography

It sounds futuristic, but the future is now, and quantum computing promises to bring about a revolution. The field is advancing rapidly, promising advances in a wide spectrum of fields like drug research, financial modeling, and AI. Without going into the brain-melting details, quantum computing allows for solving complex problems exponentially faster than traditional computers.

Sounds great, right? It is, except for the tricky problem of encryption. Using brute force techniques to decrypt data is nothing new. However, most current standards create data that require thousands of years to break. With conventional computers, that is. Quantum computing can reduce this to days, hours, or even minutes. Encryption, the very rock of data security for every system ever built, is quickly moot. The implications are staggering.

New quantum-resistant cryptography is necessary to fight this new threat to privacy, and NIST is leading the charge. Don't worry too much yet—widespread quantum computing is still quite a ways off. The interesting thing to watch, though, will be how quickly the industry can embrace these changes now to be ready for the coming threat.

Wrapping up

Security never stands still, and 2025 will be no exception. As threats, new and old, continue to evolve, IT pros must stay ahead of the curve. The good news? 

The same best practices we've always strived for will still hold. Also, the same innovation powering the bad guys will also power the good, bringing new AI-driven defenses to keep us safe. We must embrace the fact that security isn't a one-time fix but a continuous process of adoption and vigilance. Here's to another year of keeping the lights on!

Want to learn more about becoming a Security Engineer? Consider this Security+ online training.