New research shows AI is driving cybersecurity compromises amid rising data volumes, LLM threats, and growing public cloud concerns
Gigamon, a leader in deep observability, today released its 2025 Hybrid Cloud Security Survey, revealing that hybrid cloud infrastructure is under mounting strain from the growing influence of artificial intelligence (AI). The annual study, now in its third year, surveyed over 1,000 global Security and IT leaders across Australia, France, Germany, Singapore, UK, and US. As cyberthreats increase in both scale and sophistication, breach rates have surged to 53 percent in Australia during the past year, representing a 17 percent year-on-year (YoY) rise, with AI-generated attacks emerging as a key driver of this growth.
Security and IT teams are being pushed to a breaking point, with the economic cost of cybercrime now estimated to be $3 trillion worldwide according to the World Economic Forum. As AI-enabled adversaries grow more agile, organisations are challenged with ineffective and inefficient tools, fragmented cloud environments, and limited intelligence.
Key Findings Highlight How AI is Reshaping Hybrid Cloud Security Priorities
- AI's role in escalating network complexity and accelerating risk is evident. The study reveals that 46 percent of Security and IT leaders say managing AI-generated threats is now their top security priority. One in three organisations report that network data volumes have more than doubled in the past two years due to AI workloads, while more than half of respondents (56 percent) in Australia are seeing a rise in attacks targeting their organisation's large language model (LLM) deployments. More than half (58 percent) say they've seen a surge in AI-powered ransomware—up from 41 percent in 2024, underscoring how adversaries are exploiting AI to outpace and outflank existing defences.
- Compromises highlight continued trade-offs in foundational areas of hybrid cloud security. Nine out of ten (94 percent in Australia) Security and IT leaders concede that they need to make compromises in securing and managing their hybrid cloud infrastructure. The key challenges that create these compromises include the lack of clean, high-quality data to support secure AI workload deployment (46 percent) and lack of comprehensive insight and visibility across their environments, including lateral movement in East-West traffic (47 percent).
- Public cloud risks prompt industry recalibration. Once considered an acceptable risk in the rush to scale post-COVID operations, the public cloud is now coming under increasingly intense scrutiny. Many organisations are rethinking their cloud strategies in the face of their growing exposure, with 70 percent of Security and IT leaders now viewing the public cloud as a greater risk than any other environment. As a result, 70 percent report their organisation is actively considering repatriating data from public to private cloud due to security concerns and 54 percent are reluctant to use AI in public cloud environments, citing fears around intellectual property protection.
- Visibility is top of mind for Security leaders. As cyberattacks become more sophisticated, the limitations of existing security tools are coming sharply into focus. Organisations are shifting their priorities toward gaining complete visibility into their environments, a capability now seen as crucial for effective threat detection and response. More than half (55 percent) of respondents lack confidence in their current tools' ability to detect breaches, citing limited visibility as the core issue. As a result, 64 percent say their number one focus for the next 12 months is achieving real-time threat monitoring and delivered through having complete visibility into all data in motion.
"Security teams are struggling to keep pace with the speed of AI adoption and the growing complexity of and vulnerability of public cloud environments," said David Land, vice president, APAC at Gigamon. "Deep observability addresses this challenge by combining MELT data with network-derived telemetry such as packets, flows, and metadata, delivering increased visibility and a more informed view of risk. It enables teams to close visibility gaps, regain control, and act proactively with increased confidence. With 87 percent of Security and IT leaders in Australia agreeing it is critical to securing AI deployments, deep observability is fast becoming a strategic imperative."
Deep Observability Becomes the New Standard
With AI driving unprecedented traffic volumes, risk, and complexity, nearly nine in 10 (89 percent) Security and IT leaders cite deep observability as fundamental to securing and managing hybrid cloud infrastructure. Executive leadership is taking notice, as boards increasingly prioritise complete visibility into all data in motion, with 83 percent of Australian respondents confirming that deep observability is now being discussed at the board level to better protect hybrid cloud environments.
About the survey
The 2025 Hybrid Cloud Security Survey was commissioned by Gigamon and fielded in collaboration with Vitreous World. The data is based on findings of an online survey of 1,021 global respondents Feb. 21- Mar. 7, 2025.
