Australia And New Zealand Threat Worries Deepen In H1 2025

**Executive Summary:** The ANZ H1 2025 threat landscape shows a marked escalation in ransomware (notably Akira, Qilin, DragonForce and others), AI-enhanced phishing and social engineering, rising software and IT supply-chain compromises, widespread cloud misconfigurations and active exploitation of vulnerabilities and zero-days; average ransom demands now exceed USD 750,000 and supply-chain incidents have surged across most sectors, prompting urgent strategic imperatives for resilience, supply-chain hardening, cloud security and AI-aware user training.