2025 Cyber Threat Report: The Escalating Risks Every CISO Must Prepare For


The Cybersecurity Wake-Up Call: Why CISOs Must Prepare for 2025

2024 wasn’t just another year in cybersecurity—it was a battlefield. Attacks escalated in both frequency and sophistication, leaving organizations scrambling to keep up. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks surged, with geopolitical tensions fueling targeted assaults across finance, healthcare, and government sectors. Meanwhile, AI-powered cybercrime, legacy and abandoned APIs, and increasingly coordinated hacktivist groups have reshaped the digital threat landscape.

The question isn’t whether your organization will be targeted—it’s when and how prepared you’ll be when it happens.

The DDoS Explosion: More Attacks, Greater Sophistication

DDoS attacks hit a new high in 2024, with a staggering 550% increase in web-based attacks year-over-year. Attackers exploited advanced Layer 7 (L7) vulnerabilities, including the HTTP/2 Rapid Reset flaw, to overwhelm financial institutions, e-commerce platforms, and telecom providers. Some of the most intense attacks peaked at over 16 million requests per second, with an average duration of nearly 10 hours per attack—double the length of those in 2023.

What’s driving this surge? The commodification of cybercrime. DDoS-for-hire services have made launching an attack as easy as ordering takeout, and geopolitical tensions have inspired coordinated hacktivist efforts targeting critical infrastructure worldwide.

Number of Web DDoS attacks mitigated per quarter (source: Radware)

APIs: The Silent Entry Point for Cybercriminals

APIs are the backbone of modern applications, but they’re also prime targets for attackers. In 2024, API attacks surged by 41%, with vulnerability exploitation making up one-third of all malicious traffic. The rise of shadow and zombie APIs—undocumented or forgotten endpoints—has created major blind spots for security teams, allowing hackers to exploit business logic flaws and exfiltrate data without detection.

CISOs must ask themselves: How many APIs in your environment are unaccounted for? If you can’t answer that question, you may already be exposed.

AI: The Double-Edged Sword of Cybersecurity

AI isn’t just a tool for defenders anymore—threat actors are using it to their advantage. Generative AI is powering next-level phishing campaigns and malware development, making social engineering attacks more convincing than ever. Attackers are also leveraging specifically tuned offline AI models to sell as underground services, such as FraudGPT, to automate reconnaissance, exploit vulnerabilities, and evade detection.

Even worse? AI systems themselves are becoming high-value targets. Attackers are manipulating training data to poison AI models, leading to biased outputs and unreliable decision-making, and provide those models for download in popular open repositories.

Industries that mitigated the most network DDoS attack volume (source: Radware)

What’s Next? Adapt or Become a Target

The cybersecurity threats of 2024 have set the stage for an even more volatile 2025. Organizations can’t afford to rely on outdated security strategies.

Here’s what CISOs need to prioritize now:

  • Proactive DDoS Defense – Traditional mitigation isn’t enough. Adopt AI-driven detection and real-time response strategies to counter evolving threats.
  • API Security & Visibility – Map and monitor all API traffic, including shadow and zombie APIs, to prevent unauthorized access.
  • AI-Aware Cybersecurity – Strengthen defenses against AI-generated threats and ensure your own AI models aren’t being manipulated.
  • Threat Intelligence Integration – Real-time insights into emerging threats can mean the difference between prevention and catastrophe.

The future of cybersecurity isn’t just about keeping up—it’s about staying ahead. As cybercriminals continue to innovate, so must we. The time to act is now.

2025 Global Threat Analysis Report Cover

Read Radware’s full 2025 Global Threat Analysis Report to uncover the latest attack trends and defense strategies.

Download the Full Report Here

Pascal Geenens

Pascal Geenens

As the Director, Threat Intelligence for Radware, Pascal helps execute the company's thought leadership on today’s security threat landscape. Pascal brings over two decades of experience in many aspects of Information Technology and holds a degree in Civil Engineering from the Free University of Brussels. As part of the Radware Security Research team Pascal develops and maintains the IoT honeypots and actively researches IoT malware. Pascal discovered and reported on BrickerBot, did extensive research on Hajime and follows closely new developments of threats in the IoT space and the applications of AI in cyber security and hacking. Prior to Radware, Pascal was a consulting engineer for Juniper working with the largest EMEA cloud and service providers on their SDN/NFV and data center automation strategies. As an independent consultant, Pascal got skilled in several programming languages and designed industrial sensor networks, automated and developed PLC systems, and lead security infrastructure and software auditing projects. At the start of his career, he was a support engineer for IBM's Parallel System Support Program on AIX and a regular teacher and presenter at global IBM conferences on the topics of AIX kernel development and Perl scripting.

Contact Radware Sales

Our experts will answer your questions, assess your needs, and help you understand which products are best for your business.

Already a Customer?

We’re ready to help, whether you need support, additional services, or answers to your questions about our products and solutions.

Locations
Get Answers Now from KnowledgeBase
Get Free Online Product Training
Engage with Radware Technical Support
Join the Radware Customer Program

Get Social

Connect with experts and join the conversation about Radware technologies.

Blog
Security Research Center
CyberPedia