November 3, 2024

AI and Cybersecurity: Predictions for 2025

Discover the role of AI in shaping cybersecurity predictions for 2025 and how organizations can prepare for emerging threats.

Written by

The Darktrace Community

Inside the SOC

Darktrace cyber analysts are world-class experts in threat intelligence, threat hunting and incident response, and provide 24/7 SOC support to thousands of Darktrace customers around the globe. Inside the SOC is exclusively authored by these experts, providing analysis of cyber incidents and threat trends, based on real-world experience in the field.

Written by

The Darktrace Community

Nov 2024

Introduction: AI cybersecurity predictions for 2025

Each year, Darktrace's AI and cybersecurity experts reflect on the events of the past 12 months and predict the trends we expect to shape the cybersecurity landscape in the year ahead. In 2024, we predicted that the global elections, fast-moving AI innovations, and increasingly cloud-based IT environments would be key factors shaping the cyber threat landscape.

Looking ahead to 2025, we expect the total addressable market of cybercrime to expand as attackers add more tactics to their toolkits. Threat actors will continue to take advantage of the volatile geopolitical environment and cybersecurity challenges will increasingly move to new frontiers like space. When it comes to AI, we anticipate the innovation in AI agents in 2024 to pave the way for the rise of multi-agent systems in 2025, creating new challenges and opportunities for cybersecurity professionals and attackers alike.

Here are ten trends to watch for in 2025:

1. The overall Total Addressable Market (TAM) of cybercrime gets bigger

Cybercrime is a global business, and an increasingly lucrative one, scaling through the adoption of AI and cybercrime-as-a-service. Annual revenue from cybercrime is already estimated to be over $8 trillion, which we’ve found is almost 5x greater than the revenue of the Magnificent Seven stocks. There are a few key factors driving this growth.

The ongoing growth of devices and systems means that existing malware families will continue to be successful. As of October 2024, it’s estimated that more than 5.52 billion people (~67%) have access to the internet and sources estimate 18.8 billion connected devices will be online by the end of 2024. The increasing adoption of AI is poised to drive even more interconnected systems as well as new data centers and infrastructure globally.

At the same time, more sophisticated capabilities are available for low-level attackers – we’ve already seen the trickle-down economic benefits of living off the land, edge infrastructure exploitation, and identity-focused exploitation. The availability of Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) and Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) make more advanced tactics the norm. The subscription income that these groups can generate enables more adversarial innovation, so attacks are getting faster and more effective with even bigger financial ramifications.

While there has also been an increasing trend in the last year of improved cross-border law enforcement, the efficacy of these efforts remains to be seen as cybercriminal gangs are also getting more resilient and professionalized. They are building better back-up systems and infrastructure as well as more multi-national networks and supply chains.

2. Security teams need to prepare for the rise of AI agents and multi-agent systems

Throughout 2024, we’ve seen major announcements about advancements in AI agents from the likes of OpenAI, Microsoft, Salesforce, and more. In 2025, we’ll see increasing innovation in and adoption of AI agents as well as the emergence of multi-agent systems (or “agent swarms”), where groups of autonomous agents work together to tackle complex tasks.

The rise of AI agents and multi-agent systems will introduce new challenges in cybersecurity, including new attack vectors and vulnerabilities. Security teams need to think about how to protect these systems to prevent data poisoning, prompt injection, or social engineering attacks.

One benefit of multi-agent systems is that agents can autonomously communicate, collaborate, and interact. However without clear and distinct boundaries and explicit permissions, this can also pose a major data privacy risk and avenue for manipulation. These issues cannot be addressed by traditional application testing alone. We must ensure these systems are secure by design, where robust protective mechanisms and data guardrails are built into the foundations.

3. Threat actors will be the earliest adopters of AI agents and multi-agent systems

We’ve already seen how quickly threat actors have been able to adopt generative AI for tasks like email phishing and reconnaissance. The next frontier for threat actors will be AI agents and multi-agent systems that are specialized in autonomous tasks like surveillance, initial access brokering, privilege escalation, vulnerability exploitation, data summarization for smart exfiltration, and more. Because they have no concern for safe, secure, accurate, and responsible use, adversaries will adopt these systems faster than cyber defenders.

We could also start to see use cases emerge for multi-agent systems in cyber defense – with potential for early use cases in incident response, application testing, and vulnerability discovery. On the whole, security teams will be slower to adopt these systems than adversaries because of the need to put in place proper security guardrails and build trust over time.

4. There is heightened supply chain risk for Large Language Models (LLMs)

Training LLMs requires a lot of data, and many experts have warned that world is running out of quality data for that training. As a result, there will be an increasing reliance on synthetic data, which can introduce new issues of accuracy and efficacy. Moreover, data supply chain risks will be an Achilles heel for organizations, with the potential interjection of vulnerabilities through the data and machine learning providers that they rely on. Poisoning one data set could have huge trickle-down impacts across many different systems. Data security will be paramount in 2025.

5. The race to identify software vulnerabilities intensifies

The time it takes for threat actors to exploit newly published CVEs is getting shorter, giving defenders an even smaller window to apply patches and remediations. A 2024 report from Cloudflare found that threat actors quickly weaponized proof of concept exploits in attacks as quickly as 22 minutes after the exploits were made public.

At the same time, 2024 also saw the first reports from researchers across academia and the tech industry using AI for vulnerability discovery in real-world code. With threat actors getting faster at exploiting vulnerabilities, defenders will need to use AI to identify vulnerabilities in their software stack and to help identify and prioritize remediations and patches.

6. Insider threat risks will force organizations to evolve zero trust strategies

In 2025, an increasingly volatile geopolitical situation and the intensity of the AI race will make insider threats an even bigger risk for businesses, forcing organizations to expand zero-trust strategies. The traditional zero-trust model provides protection from external threats to an organization’s network by requiring continuous verification of the devices and users attempting to access critical business systems, services, and information from multiple sources. However, as we have seen in the more recent Jack Teixeira case, malicious insiders can still do significant damage to an organization within their approved and authenticated boundary.

To circumvent the remaining security gaps in a zero-trust architecture and mitigate increasing risk of insider threats, organizations will need to integrate a behavioral understanding dimension to their zero-trust approaches. The zero-trust best practice of “never trust, always verify” needs to evolve to become “never trust, always verify, and continuously monitor.”

7. Identity remains an expensive problem for businesses

2024 saw some of the biggest and costliest attacks – all because the attacker had access to compromised credentials. Essentially, they had the key to the front door. Businesses still struggle with identity and access management (IAM), and it’s getting more complex now that we’re in the middle of a massive Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) migration driven by increasing rates of AI and cloud use across businesses.

This challenge is going to be exacerbated in 2025 by a few global and business factors. First, there is an increasing push for digital identities, such as the rollout of the EU Digital Identity Framework that is underway, which could introduce additional attack vectors. As they scale, businesses are turning more and more to centralized identity and access solutions with decentralized infrastructure and relying on SaaS and application-native security.

8. Increasing vulnerabilities at the edge

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations had to stand-up remote access solutions quickly – in a matter of days or weeks – without the high level of due diligence that they require to be fully secured. In 2025, we expect to see continued fall-out as these quickly spun-up solutions start to present genuine vulnerability to businesses. We’ve already seen this start to play out in 2024 with the mass-exploitation of internet-edge devices like firewalls and VPN gateway products.

By July 2024, Darktrace’s threat research team observed that the most widely exploited edge infrastructure devices were those related to Ivanti Connect Secure, JetBrains TeamCity, FortiClient Enterprise Management Server, and Palo Alto Networks PAN-OS. Across the industry, we’ve already seen many zero days and vulnerabilities exploiting these internet-connected devices, which provide inroads into the network and store/cache credentials and passwords of other users that are highly valuable for threat actors.

9. Hacking Operational Technology (OT) gets easier

Hacking OT is notoriously complex – causing damage requires an intimate knowledge of the specific systems being targeted and historically was the reserve of nation states. But as OT has become more reliant and integrated with IT systems, attackers have stumbled on ways to cause disruption without having to rely on the sophisticated attack-craft normally associated with nation-state groups. That’s why some of the most disruptive attacks of the last year have come from hacktivist and financially-motivated criminal gangs – such as the hijacking of internet-exposed Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) by anti-Israel hacking groups and ransomware attacks resulting in the cancellation of hospital operations.

In 2025, we expect to see an increase in cyber-physical disruption caused by threat groups motivated by political ideology or financial gain, bringing the OT threat landscape closer in complexity and scale to that of the IT landscape. The sectors most at risk are those with a strong reliance on IoT sensors, including healthcare, transportation, and manufacturing sectors.

10. Securing space infrastructure and systems becomes a critical imperative

The global space industry is growing at an incredibly fast pace, and 2025 is on track to be another record-breaking year for spaceflight with major missions and test flights planned by NASA, ESA, CNSA as well as the expected launch of the first commercial space station from Vast and programs from Blue Origin, Amazon and more. Research from Analysis Mason suggests that 38,000 additional satellites will be built and launched by 2033 and the global space industry revenue will reach $1.7 trillion by 2032. Space has also been identified as a focus area for the incoming US administration.

In 2025, we expect to see new levels of tension emerge as private and public infrastructure increasingly intersect in space, shining a light on the lack of agreed upon cyber norms and the increasing challenge of protecting complex and remote space systems against modern cyber threats. Historically focused on securing earth-bound networks and environments, the space industry will face challenges as post-orbit threats rise, with satellites moving up the target list.

The EU’s NIS2 Directive now recognizes the space sector as an essential entity that is subject to its most strict cybersecurity requirements. Will other jurisdictions follow suit? We expect global debates about cyber vulnerabilities in space to come to the forefront as we become more reliant on space-based technology.

Conclusion: Preparing for the future

Whatever 2025 brings, Darktrace is committed to providing robust cybersecurity leadership and solutions to enterprises around the world. Our team of subject matter experts will continue to monitor emerging threat trends, advising both our customers and our product development teams.

And for day-to-day security, our multi-layered AI cybersecurity platform can protect against all types of threats, whether they are known, unknown, entirely novel, or powered by AI. It accomplishes this by learning what is normal for your unique organization, therefore identifying unusual and suspicious behavior at machine speed, regardless of existing rules and signatures. In this way, organizations with Darktrace can be ready for any developments in the cybersecurity threat landscape that the new year may bring.

Discover more about Darktrace's predictions on the AI and cybersecurity landscape for 2025 by watching the full recorded webinar here.

Written by

The Darktrace Community

Inside the SOC

Written by

The Darktrace Community

•

April 4, 2025

Pallavi Singh

Product Marketing Manager, OT Security & Compliance

Director of Product Management, Cado

Watch the NIS2 Webinar

Blog

Email

April 14, 2025

Email bombing exposed: Darktrace’s email defense in action

picture of a computer screen showing a password login

What is email bombing?

An email bomb attack, also known as a "spam bomb," is a cyberattack where a large volume of emails—ranging from as few as 100 to as many as several thousand—are sent to victims within a short period.

How does email bombing work?

Email bombing is a tactic that typically aims to disrupt operations and conceal malicious emails, potentially setting the stage for further social engineering attacks. Parallels can be drawn to the use of Domain Generation Algorithm (DGA) endpoints in Command-and-Control (C2) communications, where an attacker generates new and seemingly random domains in order to mask their malicious connections and evade detection.

In an email bomb attack, threat actors typically sign up their targeted recipients to a large number of email subscription services, flooding their inboxes with indirectly subscribed content [1].

Multiple threat actors have been observed utilizing this tactic, including the Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) group Black Basta, also known as Storm-1811 [1] [2].

Darktrace detection of email bombing attack

In early 2025, Darktrace detected an email bomb attack where malicious actors flooded a customer's inbox while also employing social engineering techniques, specifically voice phishing (vishing). The end goal appeared to be infiltrating the customer's network by exploiting legitimate administrative tools for malicious purposes.

The emails in these attacks often bypass traditional email security tools because they are not technically classified as spam, due to the assumption that the recipient has subscribed to the service. Darktrace / EMAIL's behavioral analysis identified the mass of unusual, albeit not inherently malicious, emails that were sent to this user as part of this email bombing attack.

Email bombing attack overview

In February 2025, Darktrace observed an email bombing attack where a user received over 150 emails from 107 unique domains in under five minutes. Each of these emails bypassed a widely used and reputable Security Email Gateway (SEG) but were detected by Darktrace / EMAIL.

Figure 1: Graph showing the unusual spike in unusual emails observed by Darktrace / EMAIL.

The emails varied in senders, topics, and even languages, with several identified as being in German and Spanish. The most common theme in the subject line of these emails was account registration, indicating that the attacker used the victim’s address to sign up to various newsletters and subscriptions, prompting confirmation emails. Such confirmation emails are generally considered both important and low risk by email filters, meaning most traditional security tools would allow them without hesitation.

Additionally, many of the emails were sent using reputable marketing tools, such as Mailchimp’s Mandrill platform, which was used to send almost half of the observed emails, further adding to their legitimacy.

Figure 2: Darktrace / EMAIL’s detection of an email being sent using the Mandrill platform.

Figure 3: Darktrace / EMAIL’s detection of a large number of unusual emails sent during a short period of time.

While the individual emails detected were typically benign, such as the newsletter from a legitimate UK airport shown in Figure 3, the harmful aspect was the swarm effect caused by receiving many emails within a short period of time.

Traditional security tools, which analyze emails individually, often struggle to identify email bombing incidents. However, Darktrace / EMAIL recognized the unusual volume of new domain communication as suspicious. Had Darktrace / EMAIL been enabled in Autonomous Response mode, it would have automatically held any suspicious emails, preventing them from landing in the recipient’s inbox.

Figure 4: Example of Darktrace / EMAIL’s response to an email bombing attack taken from another customer environment.

Following the initial email bombing, the malicious actor made multiple attempts to engage the recipient in a call using Microsoft Teams, while spoofing the organizations IT department in order to establish a sense of trust and urgency – following the spike in unusual emails the user accepted the Teams call. It was later confirmed by the customer that the attacker had also targeted over 10 additional internal users with email bombing attacks and fake IT calls.

The customer also confirmed that malicious actor successfully convinced the user to divulge their credentials with them using the Microsoft Quick Assist remote management tool. While such remote management tools are typically used for legitimate administrative purposes, malicious actors can exploit them to move laterally between systems or maintain access on target networks. When these tools have been previously observed in the network, attackers may use them to pursue their goals while evading detection, commonly known as Living-off-the-Land (LOTL).

Subsequent investigation by Darktrace’s Security Operations Centre (SOC) revealed that the recipient's device began scanning and performing reconnaissance activities shortly following the Teams call, suggesting that the user inadvertently exposed their credentials, leading to the device's compromise.

Darktrace’s Cyber AI Analyst was able to identify these activities and group them together into one incident, while also highlighting the most important stages of the attack.

Figure 5: Cyber AI Analyst investigation showing the initiation of the reconnaissance/scanning activities.

The first network-level activity observed on this device was unusual LDAP reconnaissance of the wider network environment, seemingly attempting to bind to the local directory services. Following successful authentication, the device began querying the LDAP directory for information about user and root entries. Darktrace then observed the attacker performing network reconnaissance, initiating a scan of the customer’s environment and attempting to connect to other internal devices. Finally, the malicious actor proceeded to make several SMB sessions and NTLM authentication attempts to internal devices, all of which failed.

Figure 6: Device event log in Darktrace / NETWORK, showing the large volume of connections attempts over port 445.

Figure 7: Darktrace / NETWORK’s detection of the number of the login attempts via SMB/NTLM.

While Darktrace’s Autonomous Response capability suggested actions to shut down this suspicious internal connectivity, the deployment was configured in Human Confirmation Mode. This meant any actions required human approval, allowing the activities to continue until the customer’s security team intervened. If Darktrace had been set to respond autonomously, it would have blocked connections to port 445 and enforced a “pattern of life” to prevent the device from deviating from expected activities, thus shutting down the suspicious scanning.

Conclusion

Email bombing attacks can pose a serious threat to individuals and organizations by overwhelming inboxes with emails in an attempt to obfuscate potentially malicious activities, like account takeovers or credential theft. While many traditional gateways struggle to keep pace with the volume of these attacks—analyzing individual emails rather than connecting them and often failing to distinguish between legitimate and malicious activity—Darktrace is able to identify and stop these sophisticated attacks without latency.

Thanks to its Self-Learning AI and Autonomous Response capabilities, Darktrace ensures that even seemingly benign email activity is not lost in the noise.

Credit to Maria Geronikolou (Cyber Analyst and SOC Shift Supervisor) and Cameron Boyd (Cyber Security Analyst), Steven Haworth (Senior Director of Threat Modeling), Ryan Traill (Analyst Content Lead)

Appendices

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2024/05/15/threat-actors-misusing-quick-assist-in-social-engineering-attacks-leading-to-ransomware/

[2] https://thehackernews.com/2024/12/black-basta-ransomware-evolves-with.html

Darktrace Models Alerts

Internal Reconnaissance

· Device / Suspicious SMB Scanning Activity

· Device / Anonymous NTLM Logins

· Device / Network Scan

· Device / Network Range Scan

· Device / Suspicious Network Scan Activity

· Device / ICMP Address Scan

· Anomalous Connection / Large Volume of LDAP Download

· Device / Suspicious LDAP Search Operation

· Device / Large Number of Model Alerts

About the author

Maria Geronikolou

Cyber Analyst

Blog

Email

April 11, 2025

FedRAMP High-compliant email security protects federal agencies from nation-state attacks

U.S. government building with flag against blue sky

What is FedRAMP High Authority to Operate (ATO)?

Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP®) High is a government-wide program that promotes the adoption of secure cloud services across the federal government by providing a standardized approach to security and risk assessment for cloud technologies and federal agencies, ensuring the protection of federal information.

Cybersecurity is paramount in the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), where protecting sensitive information and ensuring operational resilience from the most sophisticated adversaries has national security implications. Organizations within the DIB must comply with strict security standards to work with the U.S. federal government, and FedRAMP High is one of those standards.

Darktrace achieves FedRAMP High ATO across IT, OT, and email

Last week, Darktrace Federal shared that we achieved FedRAMP® High ATO, a significant milestone that recognizes our ability to serve federal customers across IT, OT, and email via secure cloud-native deployments.

Achieving the FedRAMP High ATO indicates that Darktrace Federal has achieved the highest standard for cloud security controls and can handle the U.S. federal government’s most sensitive, unclassified data in cloud environments.

Azure Government email security with FedRAMP High ATO

Darktrace has now released Darktrace Commercial Government Cloud High/Email (DCGC High/Email). This applies our email coverage to systems hosted in Microsoft's Azure Government, which adheres to NIST SP 800-53 controls and other federal standards. DCGC High/Email both meets and exceeds the compliance requirements of the Department of Defense’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC), providing organizations with a much-needed email security solution that delivers unparalleled, AI-driven protection against sophisticated cyber threats.

In these ways, DCGC High/Email enhances compliance, security, and operational resilience for government and federally-affiliated customers. Notably, it is crucial for securing contractors and suppliers within DIB, helping those organizations implement necessary cybersecurity practices to protect Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) and Federal Contract Information (FCI).

Adopting DCGC High/Email ensures organizations within the DIB can work with the government without needing to invest extensive time and money into meeting the strict compliance standards.

Building DCGC High/Email to ease DIB work with the government

DCGC High/Email was built to achieve FedRAMP High standards and meet the most rigorous security standards required of our customers. This level of compliance not only allows more organizations than ever to leverage our AI-driven technology, but also ensures that customer data is protected by the highest security measures available.

The DIB has never been more critical to national security, which means they are under constant threats from nation state and cyber criminals. We built DCGC High/Email to FedRAMP High controls to ensure sensitive company and federal government communications are secured at the highest level possible.” – Marcus Fowler, CEO of Darktrace Federal

Evolving threats now necessitate DCGC High/Email

According to Darktrace’s 2025 State of AI Cybersecurity report, more than half (54%) of global government cybersecurity professionals report seeing a significant impact from AI-powered cyber threats.

These aren’t the only types of sophisticated threats. Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs) are launched by nation-states or cyber-criminal groups with the resources to coordinate and achieve long-term objectives.

These attacks are carefully tailored to specific targets, using techniques like social engineering and spear phishing to gain initial access via the inbox. Once inside, attackers move laterally through networks, often remaining undetected for months or even years, silently gathering intelligence or preparing for a decisive strike.

However, the barrier for entry for these threat actors has been lowered immensely, likely related to the observed impact of AI-powered cyber threats. Securing email environments is more important than ever.

Darktrace’s 2025 State of AI Cybersecurity report also found that 89% of government cybersecurity professionals believe AI can help significantly improve their defensive capabilities.

Darktrace's AI-powered defensive tools are uniquely capable of detecting and neutralizing APTs and other sophisticated threats, including ones that enter via the inbox. Our Self-Learning AI continuously adapts to evolving threats, providing real-time protection.

Darktrace builds to secure the DIB to the highest degree

In summary, Darktrace Federal's achievement of FedRAMP High ATO and the introduction of DCGC High/Email mark significant advancements in our ability to protect defense contractors and federal customers against sophisticated threats that other solutions miss.

For a technical review of Darktrace Federal’s Cyber AI Mission Defense™ solution, download an independent evaluation from the Technology Advancement Center here.

[related-resource]

About the author

Marcus Fowler

CEO of Darktrace Federal and SVP of Strategic Engagements and Threats

Your data. Our AI.

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AI and Cybersecurity: Predictions for 2025

Introduction: AI cybersecurity predictions for 2025

1. The overall Total Addressable Market (TAM) of cybercrime gets bigger

2. Security teams need to prepare for the rise of AI agents and multi-agent systems

3. Threat actors will be the earliest adopters of AI agents and multi-agent systems

4. There is heightened supply chain risk for Large Language Models (LLMs)

5. The race to identify software vulnerabilities intensifies

6. Insider threat risks will force organizations to evolve zero trust strategies

7. Identity remains an expensive problem for businesses

8. Increasing vulnerabilities at the edge

9. Hacking Operational Technology (OT) gets easier

10. Securing space infrastructure and systems becomes a critical imperative

Conclusion: Preparing for the future

Darktrace Named as Market Leader in the 2025 Omdia Market Radar for OT Cybersecurity Platforms

Fusing Vulnerability and Threat Data: Enhancing the Depth of Attack Analysis

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Blog

Email

April 14, 2025

Email bombing exposed: Darktrace’s email defense in action

What is email bombing?

How does email bombing work?

Darktrace detection of email bombing attack

Email bombing attack overview

Conclusion

Appendices

Darktrace Models Alerts

Internal Reconnaissance

Blog

Email

April 11, 2025

FedRAMP High-compliant email security protects federal agencies from nation-state attacks

What is FedRAMP High Authority to Operate (ATO)?

Darktrace achieves FedRAMP High ATO across IT, OT, and email

Azure Government email security with FedRAMP High ATO

Building DCGC High/Email to ease DIB work with the government

Evolving threats now necessitate DCGC High/Email

Darktrace builds to secure the DIB to the highest degree