Experian’s 12th annual Data Breach Industry Forecast includes five 2025 predictions for 2025 that show that global data breaches show no signs of slowing down.
Michael Bruemmer, vice president of global data breach resolution at Experian, highlights that: “While supply chain breaches and ransomware dominated the cyber landscape in 2024, AI-related incidents will likely become a major headline maker in 2025. 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.”
Jim Steven, head of crisis and data response services at Experian global data breach resolution, adds that: “We expect that globally data breaches continue at the current pace next year with ransomware being even more sophisticated with the use of AI. We may also see threat actors escalating risks to gain greater rewards and the use of consumer data to damage reputations rising in 2025.”
According to Experian, businesses and consumers need to stay vigilant and keep on eye on these five predictions for 2025:
1. There could be a dramatic increase in the number of teens prosecuted for hacking and fraud.
The FBI reveals that the average age of someone arrested for cybercrime is 19 vs. 37 for any other crime. More and more teens are expected to be recruited by more sophisticated fraudsters through online gaming and social media.
2. One global brand may be impacted by fraud perpetrated by an insider who was provided educational AI training.
Companies continue to train their employees on the responsible use of AI, but this could result in the use of that AI education by those very same employees for internal theft, sensitive information sourcing, and much more.
3. Cyberattackers may jeopardise a nation's cloud infrastructure through an attack on the power required to run it.
Use of generative AI has created an exponentially large and clear attack vector for cyberattackers, particularly those who have had large data centres in their sights for years and understand that cloud infrastructure and data centre technology and security vary from country to country.
4. There may be a marked increase in hacker-on-hacker attacks either for political or monetary reasons.
Hackers are now being duped by sophisticated malware from a more malicious hacker and losing their funds. These incidents highlight how the boundaries between predator and prey in the digital world are increasingly blurred.
5. Dynamic identification could replace driver’s licenses and social security cards with PII that continually changes.
Normal 256 Bit Encryption is becoming obsolete, and AI-driven fraud is increasing in sophistication so quickly that fraudsters will soon be able to create virtually undiscernible proof-of-life documents that will fool even the most discriminating eye or identification system.