85% of PH companies grappled with cyber threats in ’24–Cisco
Without adequate training and faced with a shortage of cybersecurity professionals, most Philippine companies remain vulnerable to cyberattacks in an era where the use of artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly evolving.
In its 2025 Cybersecurity Readiness Index report, global tech firm Cisco found that 85 percent of companies in the country had faced AI-related cyberattacks last year.
Some 43 percent of the organizations said they experienced cases of unauthorized access to their accounts, while 38 percent saw data poisoning attempts.
Despite this, only seven of 10 respondents from the Philippines expressed confidence that their employees “fully understand” AI-related threats.
“As AI transforms the enterprise, we are dealing with an entirely new class of risks at unprecedented scale—putting even more pressure on our infrastructure and those who defend it,” Cisco chief product officer Jeetu Patel said in their third iteration of the study.
In the Philippine case, 57 percent of organizations said they were not confident about their ability to detect unregulated AI deployments that pose “significant” cybersecurity and data privacy risks.
At the same time, only 6 percent had achieved a “mature” stage of readiness to combat cybersecurity threats. Although an improvement from last year’s 1 percent, this suggested that cybersecurity preparedness remained low, according to Cisco.
Readiness was measured based on each company’s score in five pillars: identity intelligence, machine trustworthiness, network resilience, cloud reinforcement and AI fortification.
Cisco described the lack of cybersecurity preparedness in the Philippines as “alarming,” especially since 75 percent anticipated business disruptions from cyber incidents in the next 12 to 24 months.
It pointed out that companies needed to enhance their preparedness at a faster pace to remain ahead of threats, which continue to evolve and multiply.
For their part, 98 percent of companies in the Philippines have vowed to increase their spending on cybersecurity infrastructure.
“Organizations must rethink their strategies now or risk becoming irrelevant in the AI era,” Patel stressed.
“While AI brings promise of new possibilities, it also adds layers of complexity to an already complicated security landscape,” Cisco said in its study.
