Cloudflare’s 2025 Internet review highlights growth colliding with security, control

The 2025 Year in Review by Cloudflare, a leading Internet security company, paints a picture of a fast, expanding Internet with escalating security risks and increased external pressure. Using traffic data from its global network, the report captures how digital activity increased in volume but also became more complex to protect and govern.

Over the past year, global Internet traffic grew by 19 percent. This rise followed continued digital adoption across business, education, and public services. At the same time, artificial intelligence reshaped how traffic moves across the web. Automated systems now generate a larger share of requests, and competition between bots intensified. As a result, network congestion and access disputes became more common.

Meanwhile, security threats escalated in both frequency and scale. Cloudflare observed more than 25 record-breaking DDoS attacks during 2025. Attackers pushed the infrastructure further than it had ever gone, thereby compelling the organizations to reconsider their response plans and capacity assumptions.

Besides that, attackers altered their priorities as well. Civil society and non-profit organizations became the most targeted sector for the first time. This shift raised concerns about data exposure, especially for groups that rely heavily on digital platforms but lack deep security resources.

However, the report also points to defensive progress. By the end of 2025, more than half of all human Internet traffic relied on post-quantum encryption. Organizations adopted these methods to protect long-lived data from future decryption threats. Consequently, cryptography moved from a theoretical concern to an immediate operational focus for many institutions.

Beyond attacks and encryption, the report highlights how policy decisions affected Internet stability. Government actions caused nearly half of all major outages worldwide. In contrast, outages linked to physical cable damage declined sharply. At the same time, power-related disruptions increased, which exposed new weaknesses in regional infrastructure.

From a performance perspective, Europe led global rankings for average download speeds. Several countries exceeded 200 Mbps, and Spain ranked highest overall. Therefore, regional connectivity continues to influence infrastructure planning and service delivery.

Overall, Cloudflare’s findings show an Internet that grows faster each year while operating under increasing strain. Growth remains strong. However, security, policy, and resilience now shape the network as much as innovation does.