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Cybercrime won't be decreasing next year, but attack methods and targets may change, according to a Tuesday report from Experian.
This was a rough year for data breaches, ransomware, and DDoS attacks on a global scale. Hackers tied to regimes in Iran, North Korea, Russia, and China leaked documents and attacked US firms, with one "Fortune 50" company paying out a hefty $75 million ransom this summer. UnitedHealth also experienced a major data breach, exposing 100 million Americans.
"While supply chain breaches and ransomware dominated the cyber landscape in 2024, AI-related incidents will likely become a major headline maker in 2025," Michael Bruemmer, VP of Global Data Breach Resolution at Experian, said in a statement. "Investments in cybersecurity will increase to tackle this emerging threat while hackers are having a field day leveraging it for everything from phishing attacks and password cracking to producing malware and deepfakes."
AI is already being used to conduct tax schemes and travel scams. Unfortunately, such occurrences are likely to continue into 2025. Over half of Americans are concerned about deepfake-powered scams, and for good reason: AI-powered voice clones have been used to scam people and companies for the past four years or longer, whether it's by impersonating customers, politicians, or employees. AI may also soon be able dupe government-issued identification effectively, Experian warns, so governments may have to consider moving to IDs with "dynamic" data that continuously changes to prevent identity theft.
While hackers and ransomware attackers primarily targeted public infrastructure and businesses this year, Experian predicts data centers will become a big target in 2025. The number of data centers globally is rising due to AI, with tech giants like Meta, Microsoft, and Google looking to tap nuclear sources to power their data centers. Cloud infrastructure, which also runs via data centers, may be breached to disrupt companies or countries at scale.
Employees may also use AI to conduct internal fraud, according to the report, and hackers will increasingly attack each other more next year for political or financial reasons. While none of these predictions are guarantees, it's not unwise to assume that cyberattacks will become even more sophisticated in 2025.