2025: It’s a Wrap, but not for Fragile Infrastructures 5 takeaways that 2025 handed us for secure communications

By Alan Jones, CEO YEO Messaging

If 2024 marked the point at which organisations accepted that cyberattacks were inevitable, then 2025 was the year that assumption was tested. After twelve of the most turbulent months the sector has seen, cyber resilience shifted from keeping attackers out to surviving when they got in.

That shift, from protection to survival, has defined not just the threat landscape but the public conversation around trust, communications, and digital responsibility.

Throughout 2025, a series of global flashpoints exposed how fragile our digital assumptions had become.

Signalgate was one such moment in March. The White House breach did not hinge on weak encryption but entirely on misplaced trust. It highlighted a blind spot that persists across government and enterprise alike: Secure messaging is meaningless if identity is assumed rather than continually verified and authenticated. The incident reinforced a hard truth. Assumption will always lead to momentous failure. 

That same tension surfaced again with the announcement of advertising quietly rolling on WhatsApp in early summer, undermining the integrity of what service the consumer encrypted messaging platform is actually providing – a comms platform or a digital advertising platform where all your private data is available for sale and marketing? By announcing a single WhatsApp blog (users weren’t offered an opt-in screen notifying them of the change), the line between private communications and commercial surveillance became even more blurred, reigniting debate about metadata, behavioural profiling, and whether privacy-first platforms can survive within attention-driven business models. For WhatsApp users and organisations alike, the question shifted from who can read the message to who is watching the interaction.

Meanwhile, in December, Australia’s under-16 social media ban marked one of the most significant regulatory interventions in the digital lives of young people to date. While opinions differed on enforcement, the direction of travel was unmistakable. Identity, age assurance, and duty of care are no longer optional. They are becoming infrastructure, and the social media platforms need to take reasonable steps to meet their obligations. It will be an interesting unfold to watch in 2026. 

The year also saw a high frequency of major UK enterprises brought to a standstill. Incidents affecting organisations such as Marks & Spencer, The Co-Op and Jaguar Land Rover underscored a growing reality of modern cyberattacks. The objective is no longer to exfiltrate data, but to disrupt operations, silence internal communications, and apply pressure through paralysis. These were not failures of investment or intent, but reminders that even well-defended organisations can lose their ability to coordinate when core systems and communications channels are treated as compromised.

In the UK, the Government’s national ambition to become an AI powerhouse also came under sharper scrutiny throughout the year. While innovation flourished in pockets, there was a lot of meaningful talk about AI geohubs, but the year exposed a gap between capability and trust. AI systems cannot scale meaningfully without secure identity, verified communications, and resilient governance frameworks. Intelligence without assurance accelerates risk.

Where do these key events in 2025 lead us as we consider Secure Communications as we enter a new year?

2025 in Five Takeaways 

First, organisations learned to assume compromise rather than failure. The most resilient strategies focus on maintaining operations under attack, not on chasing a perfect prevention approach. It simply does not exist. 

Second, proving a continually authenticated and verified identity became more critical than encryption alone. Secure communications depend on knowing who is communicating, not just protecting the message in transit.

Third, total operational disruption became the primary target. Attacks are increasingly aimed at silencing organisations, disrupting coordination, and exerting pressure through prolonged downtime rather than through data theft.

Fourth, out-of-band communications emerged as critical infrastructure. When email, collaboration platforms, and core identity systems are taken offline, trusted external channels become essential to continuity and leadership.

Finally, trust became operational and accountable. Regulators, boards, and executives now expect secure communications to function under pressure, not just in normal conditions. We will see far more of this when the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill becomes law in early 2026.

This is why 2025 will be remembered as the year cyber resilience became the new baseline. Organisations stopped asking whether they could prevent every breach and started asking whether they could still operate, communicate, and lead when systems were compromised.

Trust is no longer a brand value or a policy statement. It is operational, measurable, and increasingly regulated.

We reflect today in a world where cyber failure is inevitable, resilience is what separates disruption from disaster, and secure out-of-band communication, where every user is continually authenticated, becomes an operational necessity for every business.