Palo Alto Networks, the world’s leading AI cybersecurity company, released its State of Generative AI 2025 report, which reveals a staggering 890% surge in Generative AI (GenAI) traffic in 2024 driven by the rapid adoption of GenAI tools in enterprise environments. While AI growth offers significant productivity benefits, the report warns that unsanctioned usage, emerging threats, and a lack of governance have rapidly expanded the attack surface for organizations, particularly across the Asia-Pacific and Japan region.
Enterprises have been quick to embrace GenAI for use cases ranging from writing assistants and coding platforms to customer support and enterprise search. However, this widespread adoption is outpacing many organizations’ ability to implement appropriate security controls. On average, organizations are now managing 66 GenAI applications in their environments, with 10% classified as high-risk.
In the Philippines, AI has been gaining momentum as a transformative force across both public and private sectors. The Department of Science and Technology (DOST) plans to invest over ₱2.6 billion in AI projects by 2028, targeting sectors such as healthcare, mobility, environment, disaster risk reduction, and emerging technology platforms. These initiatives aim to advance AI-driven innovations across critical sectors. DOST quests to optimize the power of AI to strengthen the delivery of public service, improve crisis response capabilities, promote sustainable development, and amplify the country’s position in the global digital economy.
“AI adoption offers transformative opportunities across both commercial and government sectors in the region. But as this report highlights, we are also seeing an expanding attack surface, particularly with the use of high-risk GenAI applications in critical infrastructure sectors,” said Tom Scully, Director and Principal Architect for Government and Critical Industries, Asia Pacific & Japan, at Palo Alto Networks. “Organizations must balance innovation with strong governance, adopting security architectures that account for AI’s unique risks. From shadow AI and data leakage to the more complex threats posed by agentic AI models. Proactive oversight and adaptive security controls are essential to ensuring that the benefits of AI are fully realized without compromising national security, public trust, or operational integrity.”
The 2025 State of GenAI report, based on traffic analysis from 7,051 global enterprise customers, provides an in-depth look into how enterprises are adopting GenAI and where they remain most vulnerable.
Key findings of the 2025 GenAI Security Report include:
- Top GenAI tools used by Filipinos: In the Philippines, the top three tools utilized are Grammarly (46.21%), Microsoft PowerApps (33.32%), and Microsoft 365 Copilot (13.97%), highlighting Filipinos’ strong adoption of tools for communication, productivity, and workplace efficiency.
- Exponential growth in GenAI adoption: GenAI traffic increased more than 890% in 2024. Following the release of DeepSeek-R1 in January 2025, DeepSeek-related traffic alone spiked by 1,800% within two months.
- Rising data loss incidents: GenAI-related data loss prevention (DLP) incidents more than doubled, now accounting for 14% of all data security incidents.
- Shadow AI emerges as a key risk: Unauthorized, unsanctioned GenAI use, termed “Shadow AI”, has created blind spots for IT and security teams, making it difficult to control sensitive data flows.
- Critical infrastructure and government sectors face elevated risks: Many high-risk AI models remain susceptible to jailbreak attacks that produce unsafe content, including offensive material and instructions for illegal activities.
- Industry-specific insights: Technology and manufacturing sectors alone account for 39% of AI coding transactions, creating additional risk for industries that depend on proprietary intellectual property.
“As GenAI tools become more embedded in enterprise operations in the Philippines, the risk of data exposure and threats grows significantly. It is imperative to create stronger guardrails, striking the right balance between AI-driven innovation and security,” said Steven Scheurmann, Regional Vice President for ASEAN at Palo Alto Networks. “At Palo Alto Networks, we recognize the rapid evolution of AI-driven risks. As organizations adopt AI, we’re focused on helping them safeguard against potential cyber risks associated with GenAI, empowering organizations to deploy AI bravely while protecting their entire AI ecosystems.”
The report also offers best practice recommendations for businesses seeking to safely harness the potential of GenAI:
- Establish visibility and control: Gain comprehensive oversight of GenAI app usage, implement conditional access policies, and manage permissions at the user and group level.
- Safeguard sensitive data: Deploy real-time content inspection with centralized policy enforcement to detect and prevent unauthorized data exfiltration.
- Defend against AI-driven threats: Implement Zero Trust security architectures to mitigate modern cyberthreats, malware, and sophisticated AI-powered attacks.
Data for this report was derived from Palo Alto Networks’ analysis of GenAI traffic across a global customer base of 7,051 organizations throughout 2024.
To download the full report, please visit:
