2025 Concerns Place Cybersecurity as Top Business Priority

The structural integrity of global digital systems suffered its most rigorous and public stress test ever in 2025. Within the B2B technology sector, the narrative shifted from theoretical risk management to the management of cascading, real-world failures that impacted both economic stability and national security. 

According to Forbes, the cybersecurity landscape was defined by three converging forces: the end of voluntary compliance, the fragility of hyperscale infrastructure, and the tactical maturation of nation-state aggression. These elements combined to dismantle the "compliance illusion" that many organizations had previously relied upon to satisfy stakeholders and regulators.

A significant turning point occurred on Nov. 10, 2025, when the US Department of Defense (DoD) transitioned to a "Department of War" operational stance regarding cybersecurity. This date marked the formal activation of Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) enforcement, reports Forbes. For the first time, contracting officers gained the explicit authority to make cybersecurity a mandatory, enforceable condition for federal work. This regulatory pivot transformed security from a marketing claim into a legal prerequisite for doing business within the Defense Industrial Base. Organizations found that failure to meet NIST 800-171 standards carried immediate financial consequences, including contract disqualification and litigation under the False Claims Act.

The fragility of the B2B supply chain became impossible to ignore following a series of high-profile outages. The grounding of Alaska Airlines flights and subsequent cascading failures across Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure demonstrated the dangers of over-consolidation. These events highlighted that operational resiliency for entire industries — including healthcare and retail — now rests on a handful of hyperscale providers. When these providers failed, the impact was not a minor technical inconvenience but a public safety crisis.

Parallel to these infrastructure challenges, the technological nature of threats underwent a profound transformation. Mastercard’s 2025 review characterizes the year as an "AI arms race," where AI moved from a speculative tool to the primary engine of cybercrime. Digital card skimming, once a manual process, reached industrial scale through AI-powered automation. Criminals began using autonomous tools to process thousands of fraudulent transactions simultaneously, learning and adapting to defensive triggers in real time. 

Mastercard reports that the speed and scale of these attacks have outpaced traditional human-led response times, forcing a shift toward 24/7 AI-driven monitoring to disrupt operations before data is compromised.

Despite the escalation in threat volume, 2025 also saw the rise of more effective cross-industry collaboration. The "team effort" approach became a necessity rather than an ideal. Mastercard’s partnership with Deutsche Telekom and the GSMA industry group exemplifies this trend, as telecommunications and financial networks began sharing data to track the full lifecycle of scams. By uncovering patterns that neither industry could see in isolation, these organizations aim to improve their ability to detect risky transactions earlier in the attack chain. 

Global policy also saw significant advances through the efforts of organizations like the Center for Cybersecurity Policy and Law (CCPL). The CCPL documented the submission of over 25 whitepapers and filings aimed at standardizing cybersecurity risk management. Its EU Working Group was instrumental in shaping the implementation of the NIS 2 Directive and the Cyber Resilience Act, while the Coalition to Reduce Cyber Risk (CR2) engaged with over 40 government officials to align incident reporting standards across the Asia-Pacific region. These efforts were designed to reduce the "mandated insecurity" that occurs when regulatory requirements are too prescriptive or misaligned with technical realities.

The economic impact of cyber vulnerabilities also hit new milestones during the year. IBM reports that the global average cost of a data breach fell 9% to US$4.44 million, while the cost in the United States hit a record high of US$10.22 million. Furthermore, 13% of companies reported an AI-related security incident in 2025, with 97% of those affected admitting they lacked proper AI access controls. This gap between technology adoption and security governance defined the internal struggles of many B2B enterprises throughout the year, specially in the Mexican market.

The workforce shortage transitioned from a chronic issue to a strategic risk. Many of the year’s major breaches were caused by the absence of personnel to perform "basic blocking and tackling," such as patching and log review. The industry’s inability to fill roles in security operations and cloud compliance led to widespread burnout and operational fatigue. This labor crisis prompted a reevaluation of hiring practices, with a growing emphasis on including veterans and mid-career switchers who offer discipline and mission focus, even if they lack traditional technical certifications.

As the industry enters 2026, the focus is shifting from protecting boundaries to managing "agentic" risks.

Outlook for 2026: The Age of Autonomous Risks

The trajectory for 2026, based on analysis from IBM, indicates a fundamental shift in how enterprise risk is defined and managed. The primary challenge will be the "agentic shift," where autonomous AI agents begin to operate independently within enterprise environments. This transition is expected to render legacy security models obsolete, as traditional frameworks are designed for predictable human actors rather than self-evolving machine agents

The rise of "shadow agents" — unapproved AI tools deployed by employees without oversight — is predicted to mirror the shadow IT crisis of the previous decade, but with significantly higher stakes. These agents handle proprietary algorithms and confidential data, often operating across multiple environments without leaving a clear audit trail. IBM experts suggest that in 2026, businesses will face a new exposure problem: they may know data was leaked but will be unable to determine which agent moved it or why. 

Identity security will evolve into a global security priority in 2026. Attackers are expected to pivot toward "help desk social engineering," using deepfakes and biometric voice spoofing to manipulate identity recovery workflows. The success of previous incidents, such as those involving the Scattered Spider group, will likely inspire more sophisticated impersonation tactics. As autonomous agents begin to delegate authority to sub-agents, the traditional audit trail of "who authorized what" will become blurred. 

Finally, IBM highlights "crypto-agility" as a cornerstone of 2026 resilience. As cryptographic standards evolve and the threat of quantum computing draws closer, organizations that cannot rapidly update their encryption protocols will find themselves exposed. The ability to migrate to quantum-safe algorithms in real time will separate resilient enterprises from those forced to retrofit outdated systems. 

In the coming year, security will not be defined by a single defensive posture, but by the speed at which an organization can evolve its entire cryptographic and identity infrastructure to meet a new generation of autonomous threats.