Cybersecurity priorities for IT Managers: 7 essential actions for 2025

As the new year begins, IT managers need to review their priorities to protect their business in the face of increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. Here are 7 key actions you absolutely must take as we enter 2025.

1. Have an incident response plan and run an intrusion simulation

Cyber attacks are part of today's reality. One day or another, every organization will suffer a cyber attack. So you need to prepare for the worst, and have a vigorous response plan in place in the event of an attack. This is what we call an incident response plan.

This plan identifies the activities you need to carry out to respond to each cybersecurity incident, from detection through containment and eradication to return to production. It also sets out the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder.

The plan should be tested at least once a year to ensure that it will work when needed. This can be done in the form of a tabletop simulation, for example.

2. Make a global post-mortem of incidents experienced during 2024

Every incident, phishing attempt or uncorrected vulnerability from the previous year is a learning opportunity. Take the time to analyze incident reports and security audits from the past year. These data reveal trends and vulnerabilities that need to be addressed immediately to avoid repetition.

3. Review and adjust your cybersecurity strategy

With threats constantly evolving, a static cybersecurity strategy is an invitation to failure. Assess whether your current tools and policies are up to the challenges of the new year.

Your network is under constant attack, and you need to strengthen your defense, anticipate cyberthreats and detect them as quickly as possible to reduce the risk of intrusions.

4. Re-engage your teams through targeted training

Employees remain the first line of defense, but also the weakest link if they are not well trained. Plan awareness-raising sessions tailored to each level now, focusing on emerging threats such as ransomware attacks or compromised digital identities.

5. Prioritize third-party audits and attack simulations

An external audit or penetration test can reveal blind spots that your in-house teams might miss. Plan exercises such as simulated attacks (red team/blue team) as early as the first quarter to test your defenses and fine-tune your incident response plans.

6. Prepare for AI-generated attacks

2025 will see an acceleration in AI-generated attacks. These attacks are highly complex to detect, and easily bypass signature-based security tools on the market.

Make sure you have cyber-defense tools like Streamscan's CDS that are capable of detecting anomalies via AI. This is a MUST in 2025!

7. Constantly monitor your network security

Make sure your network is monitored 24/7 by an internal or external team, as it is constantly under attack. Attacks are launched 99% of the time by bots running 24/7 in search of vulnerabilities to exploit. As soon as they find a vulnerability, they automatically try to exploit it. No one can fly under the radar

So you need to have a team on hand 24/7 to monitor malicious activity targeting you, so you can thwart it as quickly as possible.

Note also that hackers don't have weekends and don't take vacations. If you don't continuously monitor your network security, you'll end up getting hacked.