Will 2025 bring growth, shortages, opportunities or challenges? What will be the winning bets, potential pitfalls and technology trends to watch out for? We gathered insights from across our industry to profile anticipated trends and evolutionary changes and make the most out of the opportunities ahead.
1. Managed Services, a rising trend, with Managed Security Services as the growth hotspot
Cybersecurity has never been just a concern for large enterprises. SMBs are increasingly aware of the threats they face. Cybercrime has already cost Australian SMBs $300m per year with the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACC) receiving a report on average every 10 minutes. This rising tide of attacks, evidenced by an 8% increase in the self-reported cost of cybercrime in 2023-2024, has forced businesses of all sizes to prioritise cyber resilience. SMBs generally have limited scope for sizeable investment in in-house experts and infrastructure to mitigate cyber-risk. This is where Managed Security Services come into play.
The demand for managed services is set to rise, and the opportunity is particularly sizeable in the cybersecurity sector. The global Managed Security Services (MSS) market is projected to reach $67 billion by 2025.
This demand is creating a sizeable opportunity for IT providers to attract new customers and deepen relationships with existing ones. To tap into services growth, partners must leverage relationships with specialist providers to offer services without heavy investment in infrastructure and expertise. Managed Security Services go beyond traditional hardware and software solutions by integrating active management, continuous monitoring, and remediation into the security framework. Wavelink has invested in new services such as our SOC-as-a-Service and SIEM-as-a-Service. Essential services for partners to focus on will be: Penetration Testing-as-a-Service, Breach Attack Simulation-as-a-Service, Firewall-as-a-Service, Security Operations Centre-as-a-Service, Managed Detection and Response-as-a-Service and more to come.
2. Growing Investment in cybersecurity
The cybersecurity market is set to sustain its growth trajectory over the coming year and the IT channel has a clear opportunity to intercept it, considering the high percentage of cybersecurity technology spending the channel accounts for (according to Canalys, in Q2 2024, total cybersecurity technology spending through the channel accounted for 91.3%). Industry analysts forecast in excess of +10% growth for the cybersecurity market globally over the next few years. Gartner predicts end-user spending on information security will hit $212 billion in 2025, an increase of 15.1% from 2024. The ever-evolving threat environment means security is a priority, not just for chief information security officers (CISOs) but for the entire C-suite. Key areas of investment are expected to be cloud security solutions, as more organisations move to the cloud, and security services, especially managed security services and expert consultancy, in response to the ongoing skills shortage and need to manage budgets efficiently under challenging economic conditions. Platforms, rather than single solutions, will offer an integrated way to procure cybersecurity, supported by services. Channel partners will continue to play a key role in helping with this transition.
3. Australia’s Cyber Security Act brings us closer to international best practice
The Australian federal government passed the Cyber Security Act in both houses in November 2024, so let’s take a look at the main changes that are helping bring Australia in line with international best practice and the current reality of cyber security threats.
Stronger Security for Smart Devices
Companies making or selling smart devices (like IoT gadgets) now have to meet stricter security standards set by the government. This helps close the loopholes that hackers often exploit in connected devices.
Ransomware Reporting Rules
Big businesses (earning over $3 million annually) and critical infrastructure organisations must notify the Australian Signals Directorate within 72 hours if they pay a ransom. This helps the government track ransomware attacks and understand their impact.
Safe Sharing of Incident Details
If a company shares information about a cyberattack with the National Cyber Security Coordinator (NCSC), that information can only be used for handling the incident and protecting public safety. It won’t be used against the company in any regulatory action, making it easier for businesses to cooperate.
Cyber Incident Review Board (CIRB)
The Act sets up an independent board to review major cyber incidents. The goal is to learn from what happened and give actionable recommendations to prevent future breaches, without placing blame.
The SOCI (Security of Critical Infrastructure) Act also complements the Cyber Security Act. The SOCI Act is designed to protect critical infrastructure assets that are vital to Australia’s economy, security and public safety. It applies to sectors such as energy, water, healthcare, transport, financial services and telecommunications.
4. SASE adoption progress in 2025
Due to the overall complexity of security operations, industry-specific challenges, and regulatory demands, organisations are turning to Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solutions to protect their digital assets, drive digital transformation, and ensure business resilience. SASE enables an integrated networking and security architecture that converges multiple network and security functionalities into a unified cloud-managed solution. Gartner forecasts that the SASE market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 29% reaching more than US $25 billion by 2027. But successfully implementing a SASE model hinges on choosing the right partner to navigate deployment challenges. The channel, and specialist distributors such as Wavelink in particular, have a pivotal role to play with SASE in 2025, offering solutions, expertise and support needed to help customers unlock the full value of their investments.
5. AI will play both sides of the fence, enabling more sophisticated cyber-attacks and bolstering security operations centres
AI adoption will surge in 2025, with threat actors utilising AI-powered malware, intelligence gathering, and automation tools allowing cyber criminals to deploy more effective and precise cyber-attacks. On the side of defence, AI-powered analytics, anomaly detection and correlation engines will empower Security Operations Centres (SOCs) with the ability to mount an efficient defence of their organisations from the expected cyber-attack surge. The key takeaway here is that attackers only have to be right once, but defenders have to be right every time and without suitable tooling it will become increasingly difficult for SOCs to withstand the tide of increased cyber-attack events.
The adoption of AI-powered PCs will allow users to run AI applications and tasks locally. While resulting in an improvement in productivity, it should be recognised that AI-powered PCs will likely create new attack vectors for threat actors, with data exposure concerns to be considered. It will be important to train employees on the responsible use of AI to protect the business’ competitive data assets, and care should also be taken to ensure that security implications are carefully considered before activating AI features of new systems.
For example, AGL’s CIO, Andrew Haddad, has shared in CRN’s State of AI Report how the energy provider is using AI for preventative maintenance programs, churn reduction and improved customer case management.
“I certainly expect to be using tools such as AI in these areas to help is really maximise the utilisation of these assets, which in turn will also improve operational effectiveness.” – Andrew Haddad, CIO. AGL
The channel has an opportunity to play a crucial role in helping businesses identify high impact use cases for AI and ensuring responsible use of AI to reduce risk.
