FORTINET, a global cybersecurity firm, released on Wednesday, May 28, 2025, findings from an IDC survey showing a sharp increase in the volume and complexity of cyber threats across the Philippines and Asia Pacific, driven by the rapid adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by threat actors.
Commissioned by Fortinet, the survey revealed that 78 percent of Philippine organizations encountered AI-powered cyber threats in the past year, with over 60 percent reporting a two- to three-fold increase in such attacks. These include deepfake-driven business email compromise, adversarial AI and polymorphic malware.
“This new class of AI-powered threats is harder to detect and often exploits weaknesses in human behaviour, misconfigurations and identity systems,” the report said.
“Complexity is now the new battleground in cybersecurity — and AI is both the challenge and the frontline defence,” said Bambi Escalante, Fortinet Philippines country head. “Fortinet is helping organizations across The Philippines stay ahead with a unified, platform-based approach that brings together visibility, automation and resilience.”
The study also highlighted that only nine percent of organizations are confident in their ability to counter AI threats, while 19 percent cannot track them at all. Other prominent risks include ransomware (66 percent), supply chain attacks (62 percent), cloud vulnerabilities (58 percent) and insider threats (56 percent).
“Organizations are facing a surge in stealthy, complex threats... Reactive security is no longer enough — predictive, intelligence-driven operations must become the norm,” said Simon Piff, IDC Asia-Pacific vice president.
Resource shortages remain a critical issue, with only 13 percent of IT personnel dedicated to cybersecurity. Additionally, just 15 percent of firms have a standalone chief information security officer and six percent maintain specialized cyber operations teams.
Despite these concerns, cybersecurity spending is lagging. Only 15 percent of IT budgets are dedicated to cybersecurity, with just over 1.4 percent of total revenue allocated — though 80 percent of organizations reported a slight budget increase.
Fortinet noted growing interest in platform-based convergence between networking and security, with 96 percent of Philippine organizations either already integrating or evaluating such strategies. Top investment priorities include identity security, Zero Trust and cloud-native protection.
“As cyber threats grow more covert and coordinated, we’re seeing a clear shift in how organizations approach cybersecurity investment,” said Rashish Pandey, Fortinet vice president for Marketing and Communications, Asia & ANZ. “Our platform brings the scale, intelligence and simplicity needed to adapt and thrive in this new reality.”
The IDC survey covered 550 IT and security leaders across 11 Asia-Pacific markets between February and April 2025. / KOC