From Data to Defense: Insights from ReliaQuest’s 2025 Annual Threat Report

ReliaQuest’s 2025 Annual Cyber-Threat Report (covering 2024) highlights that attackers have accelerated operations—moving from initial access to lateral movement in a median 48 minutes—and increasingly use AI/automation; phishing, BEC and exploitation of unpatched public-facing assets remain top entry vectors, and ransomware actors have shifted toward data exfiltration and extortion. The report recommends adopting AI/automation in security operations, hardening common entry points (patching, securing remote services), and eliminating logging and visibility blind spots to reduce dwell time and impact.