Tenable predicts cybersecurity trends shaping 2025 landscape

Tenable has provided insights into key cybersecurity trends expected to shape 2025, highlighting the challenges and approaches organisations may adopt to tackle the evolving threat landscape.

Jason Merrick, Senior Vice President of Product at Tenable, emphasised the expanding attack surface and the increasingly sophisticated nature of threat actors. He remarked, "Everything, everywhere, all at once is not sustainable without context. As the attack surface continues to expand and threat actors grow more sophisticated, cybersecurity teams will face an overwhelming flood of fragmented vulnerability and threat intelligence data."

Merrick suggested that organisations focusing on understanding the greatest risks and prioritising critical vulnerabilities are likely to achieve better outcomes. This approach, he noted, "will redefine vulnerability management, enabling cybersecurity teams to act strategically, swiftly, and with greater precision to mitigate threats effectively."

According to Bob Huber, Chief Security Officer and Head of Research at Tenable, the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) poses significant challenges. Huber stated, "By 2025, AI adoption will likely have already outpaced our ability to educate users and secure these rapidly evolving technologies fully."

He explained how the swift evolution of AI and cloud technologies creates a knowledge gap, posing a dilemma: "how can we safeguard innovations like AI and cloud when their complexity and growth outstrip our readiness?" Bridging this gap, Huber added, is crucial for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) as they must balance technological adoption with security concerns.

Liat Hayun, Vice President of Product and Research for Tenable Cloud Security, predicts the rise of multicloud security strategies. "Multicloud strategies will become the standard in 2025," she observed, highlighting how enterprises will favour multi-vendor platforms to mitigate the risks associated with relying on a single cloud service provider. According to Hayun, this shift will help meet compliance requirements and secure AI-driven workloads.

Tenable also identified rising post-breach costs as a major trend. The average cost of a data breach rose to nearly USD $5 million in 2024, a 10% year-on-year increase. Acknowledging the broader impact of breaches, Hayun noted that "the true damage lies in downtime, reputational damages, and regulatory fines, particularly in cloud-heavy industries." As businesses increasingly experience breaches, there is a drive towards stronger post-breach playbooks.

Hayun emphasised "rapid incident response, data visibility, better containment protocols, and enhanced forensic capabilities" as crucial elements for organisations to adopt to minimise damage.

The insights from Tenable indicate a shift in the cybersecurity paradigm. A balanced approach combining breach prevention and effective recovery is becoming increasingly important. Organisations are expected to effectively enhance their strategies to address the complexity of modern cyber threats.