Cybersecurity company Check Point’s 'African Perspectives on Cyber Security Report 2025' shows a sharp rise in cyberattacks across the continent and a major shift in the tactics of attackers that is being driven by AI.

Threat actors are increasingly using AI to automate phishing, impersonation and cloud exploitation. They also target exposed identities and misconfigured systems to gain access, the report shows.

Further, Check Point observed a surge in identity-led intrusions, AI-generated phishing and multi-vector ransomware across the finance, energy, telecommunications and government sectors.

“AI has become part of the attack surface. Attackers are using it to automate phishing and identity theft at scale. The only effective response is prevention-first security that combines visibility, governance and AI protection,” says Check Point Software Technologies regional director for Africa Lorna Hardie.

Adversaries are escalating identity-centric intrusions, weaponising AI to sharpen social engineering, and exploiting supply-chain gaps across software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers, managed service providers, and telecommunications companies.

This is leading to faster breaches, broader operational disruption and rising verification and recovery costs for defenders, she says.

Across all markets, AI-generated phishing, credential theft and misconfigured cloud environments were the leading causes of compromise. AI-enabled social engineering is raising verification costs for citizens and employees, Hardie says.

Further, sensitive data is now widely distributed, which means that posture management and data-loss controls for SaaS are as critical as cloud-infrastructure baselines, she adds.

“Identity has become the new perimeter as attackers exploit credentials and misconfigured access, while compliance itself has emerged as a business risk.

“Additionally, under new regulations, such as the EU Network and Information Security 2 (NIS2) Directive, weak cybersecurity can block access to international markets, which makes digital resilience an economic necessity,” she says.

The EU remains Africa’s top trading partner. Any supplier touching European value chains, from energy and transport to manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, agriculture and digital infrastructure, will increasingly be asked to evidence NIS2-aligned controls.

Noncompliance risks delayed tenders, lost contracts and heightened audit scrutiny, the report states.

Africa’s digital expansion continues to outpace security maturity across many organisations. Cloud-first delivery, mobile money at scale and always-on citizen services have widened the attack surface, says Hardie.

“The report urges a collective rethink of resilience as digital transformation accelerates across the continent. The findings show that technology innovation, from AI to cloud and identity systems, is outpacing the security frameworks designed to protect them.

“Addressing this imbalance requires a coordinated shift from reaction to prevention to ensure that African economies can grow safely in the age of intelligent automation.”

The report highlights the importance of continuous risk assessment, regulatory readiness and public-private collaboration in building long-term digital trust.

“For business and government leaders, prevention is no longer a technical priority but a strategic one that underpins economic stability and market confidence.

“The real challenge is not adopting new technology but securing the trust that underpins it. As AI reshapes how organisations operate, cybersecurity must move from reaction to prediction. The future of resilience in Africa depends on prevention-first strategies that anticipate threats before they emerge,” she says.