Gartner’s Top Cybersecurity Trends for 2025—Are You Securing AI?

Here’s Gartner’s six cybersecurity trends for 2025 with some context about how Forcepoint can help your organization navigate them.

• Trend 1: GenAI Driving Data Security Programs
  We agree that protecting data in GenAI means securing unstructured data. This is a topic I blogged about in more detail a few months ago. Our Forcepoint DSPM product helps organizations discover, classify and prioritize unstructured data. And with its flexible polices, Forcepoint DLP gives security teams controls to protect critical data while an employee interacts with a GenAI tool.
• Trend 2: Managing Machine Identities
  How can you be sure members of your teams approved to work with GenAI tools are the only ones accessing these tools? Security teams can leverage Forcepoint Web Security (SWG) to block access for departments or individual employees. Going beyond simply blocking access, our Risk-Adaptive Protection allows security teams to monitor behavior and adjust data policies on that behavior when an employee tries to share proprietary information or access non-sanctioned GenAI tools.
• Trend 3: Tactical AI
  As the use of GenAI tools continues to expand within organizations, it’s no surprise that security teams are working to prioritize the AI projects that deliver real business value over the ones that don’t. Forcepoint data security tools give security teams options in terms of rolling out controlled access to GenAI tools for select members of a department during a pilot phase and make it easy for those teams to expand access once a given project makes sense to fully implement.  
• Trend 4: Cybersecurity Technology Optimization
  Vendor and tool consolidation continues to be a priority for organizations all over the world. That’s a big reason why, at Forcepoint, we build our tools to streamline data security across all the channels your employees use to get their work done. We designed tools like Forcepoint DSPM, DDR and DLP to focus on key elements of securing your data no matter where it resides. That drives much of the thinking behind our Data Security Everywhere approach.
• Trend 5: Extending Security Behavior and Culture Program Value
  This is another trend that seems to be relevant to security teams each year. The rapid pace of change in cybersecurity means security teams always have to think about how to keep employees educated on new security risks to look out for. And we know that employees will reach for unsanctioned tools to get their work done, something that was reinforced when our teams looked at work from home trends back in 2021. GenAI tools offer whole new levels of productivity, so it makes sense that employees will continue to lean on them now and even more in the future.
• Trend 6: Addressing Cybersecurity Burnout 
  Speaking of the rapid pace of change—things move fast in cybersecurity. Security & Risk Managers are all too familiar with the struggle to keep up with the latest threats. And there’s no question the proliferation of GenAI tools will continue to accelerate this trend. Before GenAI. the move to securing a distributed remote workforce introduced more complexity and risk. In our view, securing risk is really about securing data, no matter where it’s being accessed, who’s accessing it, or what GenAI tools are being used. No question that mitigating these risks is challenging, but not impossible. 
   

To see how Forcepoint can help your organization secure your data to mitigate GenAI risks and beyond, talk to an expert today.