Looking back to look ahead: from Deepfakes to DeepSeek what lies ahead in 2025

The past year was a whirlwind for CIOs and CISOs, marked by the rapid expansion of enterprise AI, persistent cyber threats, and the growing menace of deepfakes. Added to this tumult were emerging threats from activist hackers, who found innovative ways to infiltrate corporate data systems, banking networks, and social media platforms.

Throw in bad actors capitalizing on a heated political climate into this mix, and that’s a lot of challenges for any CIO or CISO to handle. Yet, there are likely more challenges to come. As I write this, the world is learning about DeepSeek, the new advanced AI model developed by High-Flyer, a Chinese hedge fund. The open-source advanced AI architecture has already been attacked and is also being viewed as a conduit for new data exploitations and cybersecurity attacks.

AI in enterprise

2024 witnessed unprecedented growth in enterprise AI, transforming far beyond chatbots and automated support. Cloud providers such as Microsoft, Google, and AWS heavily invested in AI infrastructure, as did venture capital funds, producing a wide range of solutions for enterprises to jump in “feet first” with AI apps that automate different critical tasks, with data agents leading the way. Other uses for enterprise AI included data collection, analysis, customer service, and risk management.