The cybersecurity industry continues to sit at the epicenter of innovation, and 2025 is already shaping up to be a year of rapid transformation. New threats are colliding with breakthrough technologies, and the Israeli ecosystem is at the heart of it—building on a record-setting pace of investment and momentum.
At Team8, our work with CISOs and entrepreneurs gives us a front-row seat to the most urgent challenges and promising opportunities taking shape this year. Here are five trends that are defining cybersecurity in 2025—and what they mean for the future.
1. The ‘AI-Everywhere” Enterprise
After a year of experimentation, the “AI Everywhere” shift is finally materializing in 2025. What started as cautious piloting has turned into widespread integration, as enterprises embed GenAI into productivity tools, customer service platforms, and core operations.
Yet, this rapid adoption comes with risks, particularly around unpredictability. A recent example showed a GenAI tasked with winning a chess game hacking the system to defeat a superior opponent—an unsettling reminder of how these systems can take unexpected actions. In enterprise environments, such unpredictability could lead to severe consequences.
To harness the benefits of AI while minimizing risks, organizations must establish robust governance frameworks, educate employees on responsible AI use, and deploy advanced monitoring systems to ensure AI securely aligns with business objectives.
2. The rise of Agentic AI
In 2025, Agentic AI is emerging as a powerful force reshaping enterprise workflows. This next wave moves beyond embedded AI features and into autonomous execution—capable of handling complex tasks across departments.
The cybersecurity sector is among the first to feel its impact, as a highly technical field facing a talent shortage of 4 million employees worldwide. Repetitive, time-consuming processes are likely to be the first candidates for transformation, and a new wave of startups building AI agents for security is beginning to emerge.
For example, in Security Operations Centers (SOC), autonomous AI agents could handle Tier 1 triage at scale, significantly reducing response times. In Identity and Access Management (IAM), agents might automate tasks like password resets, access provisioning, and access reviews. Even pentesting could evolve into a continuous, proactive process, with AI agents delivering real-time, context-aware testing that cuts down on time, cost, and risk.
The power of agentic AI lies in its autonomy, but that same capability introduces significant risks. Unlike traditional software that primarily retrieves and analyzes data, AI agents have ‘write’ access—enabling them to modify systems and execute changes autonomously. This opens the door to the potential for unintended disruptions. For instance, an AI agent managing firewall configurations could misinterpret its task and create backdoors if left unchecked. To harness this potential safely, organizations must enforce strict permission controls, continuously validate AI-driven changes, and strike a careful balance between automation and oversight.
3. It’s Time for Third Party Risk Management to be Redefined
Recent breaches have exposed a glaring weak point in enterprise security: third-party suppliers, including the security vendors enterprises rely on. Take the Cyberhaven breach, where attackers exploited a malicious update to its Chrome extension to steal customer passwords and session tokens. Or the BeyondTrust incident, where attackers used a compromised API key to infiltrate the U.S. Treasury Department and access departmental workstations. These examples aren’t just cautionary tales—they’re a glimpse into the future of an increasingly interconnected and vulnerable enterprise ecosystem.
With the average enterprise relying on 100+ tools across its supply chain, the risks are scaling faster than the defenses. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: current third-party risk management processes are failing to keep up. The reliance on static, compliance-focused methods like lengthy questionnaires and external scans has created a false sense of governance. These tools focus on ticking boxes rather than uncovering and mitigating real, evolving threats.
To stay ahead of these threats, enterprises must shift to proactive solutions. In 2025, we predict that third party risk management will be reinvented, with focus shifting to how third party solutions are implemented within enterprise networks. Continuous monitoring, anomaly detection, and context-driven visibility into vendor activities will enable organizations to identify and address risks in real time, ensuring vendors are not just secure in theory but in practice.
4. Protecting the Human Element: Defending Against AI-Enhanced Social Engineering
The human element has always been cybersecurity’s Achilles’ heel, and AI is giving attackers shiny new tools to exploit it. No longer limited to poorly worded phishing emails, attackers now leverage AI to craft deepfakes that can mimic a CEO’s voice and mannerisms on a Zoom call, convincing voicemails that sound uncannily authentic, and eerily realistic emails designed to deceive even the most vigilant employees. These advanced tactics exploit trust and familiarity, creating a level of sophistication that makes distinguishing genuine interactions from malicious ones increasingly challenging.
To combat these evolving threats, organizations must rethink their defenses and leverage AI not just as a weapon for attackers, but as a tool for defenders. AI can detect subtle nuances in communication that humans might miss, such as linguistic patterns in emails, inconsistencies in a voicemail’s tone or cadence, or telltale signs of a deepfake in video calls, like unnatural facial movements or mismatched audio. By flagging deviations from established norms, AI can help uncover impersonation attempts before they cause harm, turning the attackers’ own tools against them.
But should the focus be solely on advanced detection systems? or does the solution lie in simpler, time-tested security practices, such as enforcing Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) across systems to ensure every critical action is verified? Balancing these approaches may be key to staying ahead of AI-enhanced threats.
5. Maximizing ROI: The Security Stack Evolution
Security leaders are entering Q2 of 2025 with a sharper focus on ROI. After years of tool sprawl and budget pressure, consolidation is no longer a conversation—it’s an imperative. CISOs are being tasked with delivering more impact with fewer resources, even as threats grow more complex.
Despite this, Team8’s 2024 CISO survey, completed by over 100 global security leaders, showed the arms race is far from over. Budgets are still growing—70% of CISOs reported an increase in spending, compared to 53% the year before. CISOs aren’t spending less, but they’ll have to spend smarter.
Today, the focus on ROI will reshape what CISOs look for in cybersecurity startups. It’s no longer enough to offer innovative technology—new solutions must also demonstrate measurable value and align directly with business needs. CISOs are wary of “nice-to-have” products that add complexity without delivering clear benefits.
This shift creates an opportunity for startups focused on optimizing the security stack itself. These companies would specialize in identifying overlapping tools, eliminating gaps, quantifying risks, and aligning the stack with business priorities. In a landscape increasingly driven by efficiency and outcomes, the ability to make security stacks leaner and more effective might be the next big opportunity for innovation.
