The increasing use of artificial intelligence technology – both from security threat and protection improvement perspectives – are among the top look-ahead issues for 2025 among officials with providers of security technologies to the Federal government.
“With a sharp uptick in the use of artificial intelligence across both the public and private sectors, 2025 is going to usher in a lot of conversation around data sovereignty,” said Phil Fuster, Chief Growth Officer at Hitachi Vantara Federal. “These issues will be top of mind, and we will see a focus on new or upcoming regulations around data use for artificial intelligence.”
“A critical first step to any data regulation is first understanding what data you have – and then ensuring you have the right accessibility that evolves as agency needs evolve,” he said.
“In 2025, Federal agencies need to understand that attackers have evolved and changed the game,” said Hansang Bae, Public Sector Chief Technology Officer at Zscaler. “To level the playing field, we need to evolve as well and focus our security efforts on agility and adaptability. Government agencies need to leverage zero trust as the first line of defense, but recognize that while this makes us safer, we cannot become complacent.”
With the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), threats have increased in volume and complexity,” Bae said. “Luckily, we can also leverage AI to keep pace with these attacks – at Zscaler we sift through 500 trillion signals per day that go into training our AI capabilities. The key takeaway is this: AI’s effectiveness depends entirely on its training data.”
“With the right data, available at the right time, both government and industry can optimize AI to deliver actionable insights, enabling proactive defenses against evolving cyber threats,” Bae continued. “In the year ahead, the focus won’t be on whether AI is ready – it will be on fully harnessing its transformative potential and the data it produces to stay ahead of an increasingly sophisticated cyber threat landscape.”
“Critical infrastructure sectors will need to accelerate cybersecurity efforts, prioritizing ‘assume breach’ principles as they face intensifying geopolitical cyber threats,” said Gary Barlet, Public Sector CTO at Illumio.
“In 2025, utilities, transportation, healthcare, and energy will focus heavily on advanced threat detection, segmentation, and rapid incident response to contain potential breaches before they disrupt essential services,” Barlet said. “With increased investment and strategic partnerships, these sectors will work to fortify their defenses and safeguard public safety against increasingly sophisticated and state-sponsored attacks.”
