Palo Alto Networks forecasts APAC’s cybersecurity landscape for 2025

Simon Green, President, Asia Pacific and Japan at Palo Alto Networks believes the Asia Pacific region will face a perfect storm of AI-driven cyber threats, escalating in scale, sophistication, and impact in 2025.

Cybersecurity concerns continue to highlight organizations around the world. Given the increases sophistication of cyberthreats, businesses continue to invest in more robust cybersecurity solutions to ensure they are capable of dealing with these issues.

Generative AI in cybersecurity remains on the agenda for organizations in 2024 and will most likely continue in 2025. However, GenAI in cybersecurity may not be the only thing businesses should look towards in 2025.

According to Palo Alto Networks’ 2025 cybersecurity predictions for the Asia Pacific region, there are five key trends that cyber practitioners can expect to unfold in the coming twelve months and position their organizations for a more secure future.

Cybercrime in the Asia Pacific region remains at an alarming rate. While the majority of businesses continue to allocate budget to improve their cybersecurity posture, a PwC report highlighted that more than 40% of leaders say they do not understand the cyber risks posed by emerging technologies, including GenAI.

Palo Alto Networks believes that in 2025, AI will become central to cybersecurity strategy with organizations using AI to proactively mitigate risk. Crucially, they will also seek to secure their own AI models.

“The days of fragmented security approaches are over. Organizations must pivot to unified platforms powered by transparent and trustworthy AI to stay ahead. As quantum attacks loom and deepfakes become mainstream tools of deception, businesses will either innovate or risk being outpaced by adversaries. The stakes have never been higher, and trust will be the ultimate currency in this new era of cybersecurity. Those who fail to adapt risk not just breaches but irreparable damage to their reputation and resilience,” said Green.

Cybersecurity trends in 2025

As such, Palo Alto Networks predicts five trends in 2025 that will require organizations to shape their cybersecurity strategies and maximize the potential of AI technologies. The first trend will see organizations streamline their cyber infrastructure to be centered around a single unified data security platform.

Given that organizations are already facing increased complexity in managing their cybersecurity tools, 2025 will most likely see them shifting to a unified platform, offering enhanced visibility and control. A unified platform will provide end-to-end visibility and context, spanning code repositories, cloud workloads, networks, and SOCs.

“Ultimately this creates a more holistic security architecture with fewer dashboards. The convergence of all security layers onto a unified platform will optimize resources, improve overall efficiency, and enable organizations to build more resilient, adaptive defenses against evolving threats,” stated Palo Alto Networks.

The second trend in 2025 will be the increase in deepfakes in APAC, causing more havoc to both organizations and individuals. In 2024, the most effective attacks have targeted corporations for financial gain, like the employee at a Hong Kong engineering firm duped into wiring millions of dollars to a scammer who had used deepfakes to imitate the CFO and executive team on a video conference.

“Savvy criminals will take note and use ever-improving generative AI technology to launch credible deepfake attacks. The use of audio deepfakes will also become more widespread in these attacks, as the available technology allows for highly credible voice cloning. We can expect deepfakes to be used alone or as part of a larger attack much more often in 2025,” the cybersecurity vendor stated.

Palo Alto Networks also expects quantum attacks to be on the agenda in 2025. Governments and venture capital firms are investing heavily in local initiatives in quantum computing across APAC. The “harvest now, decrypt later” tactics are expected to target highly classified data with the intent to unlock it when quantum technology advances

“This poses a risk to governments and businesses, with the potential to jeopardize civilian and military communications, undermine critical infrastructure, and overcome security protocols for most internet-based financial transactions. We will likely also see nation state actors target organizations developing quantum computers themselves, in corporate espionage attacks,” said the Santa Clara based company.

Interestingly, Palo Alto Networks also believes that CIOs can debunk any hype around this topic to the board. Though significant progress with quantum annealing has been made, military-grade encryption has still not been broken.

From quantum security to transparency

Next will be the focus on transparency, specifically for maintaining customer trust in the AI era. In APAC, regulators are starting to zone in on the data protection and cybersecurity implications of the growing use of AI models. This is part of an overall bid to build trust in AI use and encourage AI-driven innovation.

“In 2025, APAC legislators’ AI focus on ethics, data protection and transparency, will remain, However, increased use of AI models will lead to greater emphasis being placed on AI security and the integrity and reliability of the data being used. Transparency and proactive communication about AI model mechanics—specifically regarding data collection, training datasets, and decision-making processes—will be essential for building customer trust,” stated Palo Alto Networks.

Lastly, organizations can be expected to focus more on product integrity and supply chain resilience in 2025. This includes conducting much more thorough risk assessments, considering accountability and legal implications of business outages and reviewing insurance arrangements.

“In cloud environments, where complexity and scale amplify risks, real-time visibility has become a necessity. Expect to see greater focus on comprehensive monitoring involving continuous tracking of both infrastructure and application performance metrics,” said Palo Alto Networks.

For Sarene Lee, Country Manager, Malaysia at Palo Alto Networks, as the country continues its rapid digitalization journey to become a regional hub, it will undoubtedly encounter growing pains. Lee believes AI and quantum computing will bring innovations that critical sectors must adopt to stay competitive, yet these same advancements will also amplify cyber risks.

“In 2025, the AI arms race will reach new heights, making it easier for attackers to deploy sophisticated AI-driven tools, including ransomware-as-a-service kits, that will target Malaysian businesses with increased scale, frequency, and impact. As these AI-powered cybercrime tools become more accessible, Malaysian enterprises will need robust, AI-driven unified data platforms to counteract and gain an edge in the war on cybercrime,” said Lee.