Cloudflare’s 2025 Internet review highlights surge in bot activity, cyber attacks and post-quantum encryption adoption

Cloudflare has released its sixth annual Year in Review, offering a detailed analysis of global Internet trends, traffic patterns and security developments observed during 2025. The report draws on data from Cloudflare’s global network and Cloudflare Radar and points to a year marked by accelerating Internet usage, evolving cyber threats and significant advances in encryption technologies.

According to the findings, global Internet traffic grew by 19% year-on-year in 2025, reflecting the expanding role of digital services in everyday personal and professional activity. At the same time, the report notes an escalation in cyber conflict, with more than 25 record-breaking distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks detected during the year.

One of the most notable security milestones highlighted is the rapid adoption of post-quantum encryption, which now protects 52% of all human Internet traffic. This marks a step towards safeguarding online communications against future cryptographic threats.

Key Internet trends from 2025

The report outlines several shifts shaping the Internet landscape:

• Concentration of Internet services: Google and Meta retained their positions as the world’s most accessed Internet services for the fourth consecutive year, while ChatGPT continued to lead the generative AI category.
• Escalation of AI-driven bot activity: Google’s web crawling bot accounted for the largest share of automated Internet traffic, significantly outpacing other AI bots.
• Changing attack targets: For the first time, civil society and non-profit organisations emerged as the most targeted sector, reflecting attackers’ growing interest in sensitive and high-value data held by these entities.
• Causes of major Internet outages: Government actions were responsible for nearly half of all major Internet disruptions globally. While outages linked to cable cuts declined by almost 50%, those caused by power failures doubled.
• Connectivity performance: European countries led global rankings for Internet speed and quality, with average download speeds exceeding 200 Mbps. Spain ranked highest overall in connectivity performance.

Matthew Prince, CEO and co-founder of Cloudflare, noted that the Internet is undergoing fundamental structural change, driven by advances in AI, evolving threat actors and shifting economic models for online content. He said the scale and frequency of attacks observed in 2025 redefined expectations around Internet resilience.

Data sources and methodology

The insights are derived from Cloudflare Radar, a publicly available analytics platform that aggregates anonymised data from Cloudflare’s global infrastructure, which spans more than 330 cities across 120+ countries, as well as from its 1.1.1.1 public DNS resolver.

Cloudflare said the annual review is intended to provide policymakers, enterprises and Internet users with greater visibility into how the online ecosystem is evolving, and to inform discussions around resilience, security and future Internet governance.