Cloudflare has released its sixth annual Year in Review, providing a comprehensive analysis of global Internet trends for 2025. The report highlights a 19% year-over-year surge in global traffic, escalating cyber warfare with record-breaking DDoS attacks, and the increasing dominance of AI bots, alongside significant security advancements like widespread post-quantum encryption adoption.
Quick Intel
Global Internet traffic grew 19% year-over-year in 2025.
Over 25 record-breaking DDoS attacks were recorded, indicating escalated cyber warfare.
Post-quantum encryption now secures 52% of all human Internet traffic.
Google's crawler was the single largest source of automated traffic, dominating AI bots.
Civil society/non-profits became the most attacked sector for the first time.
Government actions caused nearly half of all major global Internet disruptions.
A Year of Transformative Growth and Escalated Threats
The Internet's central role expanded significantly in 2025, driven by AI advancements and increased digital dependency. This growth was paralleled by a dramatic rise in sophisticated cyber threats, with DDoS attacks reaching unprecedented scale, challenging the resilience of online infrastructure.
"The Internet isn't just changing, it's being fundamentally rewired. From AI, to more creative and sophisticated threat actors, every day is different," said Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder at Cloudflare. "We believe we have a unique responsibility to help navigate these changes and build a better Internet for everyone."
Key Trends and Shifts in the Digital Landscape
The report identifies several critical shifts. The AI landscape saw Google's crawling bot generate vastly more traffic than other AI bots, while Google and Meta remained the most popular Internet services globally. A concerning trend emerged as civil society organizations became the primary target for cyberattacks, likely due to the sensitive data they hold.
Infrastructure and Performance Insights
On infrastructure, government-ordered actions surpassed technical failures as the leading cause of major Internet outages. In terms of performance, European nations led globally, with Spain achieving the highest overall Internet quality and multiple European countries averaging download speeds above 200 Mbps.
This data, sourced from Cloudflare's global network and Radar tool, provides a vital snapshot of an Internet at a crossroads—experiencing rapid innovation and adoption while facing increasingly complex security and governance challenges.
About Cloudflare
Cloudflare, Inc. (NYSE: NET) is the leading connectivity cloud company. It empowers organizations to make their employees, applications and networks faster and more secure everywhere, while reducing complexity and cost. Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud delivers the most full-featured, unified platform of cloud-native products and developer tools, so any organization can gain the control they need to work, develop, and accelerate their business.
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