In 2025, a significant increase in global internet traffic was observed, surging by 19 percent. A report from Cloudflare indicated that this rise was accompanied by heightened automated bot activity and a notable escalation in cyberattacks, particularly affecting civil society and nonprofit organizations, which became the most targeted sectors, surpassing financial entities for the first time.
Throughout the year, Cloudflare reported blocking over 25 record-setting distributed denial-of-service attacks, underscoring the intensifying nature of cyber warfare. The report also highlighted advancements in post-quantum encryption, which now protects around 52 percent of internet traffic on its network, enhancing security against potential future threats from quantum computing.
Automated traffic dominated internet activity, with Google’s web crawler leading the way in generating automated requests. The competition among AI crawlers has resulted in what Cloudflare described as an intensifying "bot war," where automated interactions are increasingly outpacing those by human users. Meanwhile, Google and Meta continued to be the most utilized platforms globally, and ChatGPT retained its status as the leading generative AI service.
Government actions contributed to nearly half of the significant global internet outages in 2025, often linked to shutdowns and access restrictions during politically sensitive periods. In contrast, outages due to undersea cable issues decreased by almost 50 percent, while those associated with power failures doubled.