6 days ago
New security risks emerge as GenAI traffic surges 890%
A staggering 890% surge in Generative AI (GenAI) traffic was recorded in 2024, driven by the rapid adoption of GenAI tools in enterprise environments.
This raises new security challenges for enterprises in Japan and across the Asia-Pacific region.
While AI growth offers significant productivity benefits, the unsanctioned usage, emerging threats and lack of governance have rapidly expanded the attack surface for organisations, particularly across the Asia-Pacific and Japan region, according to The 2025 State of GenAI report produced by AI cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks.
On average, organisations are now managing 66 GenAI applications, with 10% classified as high-risk.
As Thailand is projected to invest at least 500 billion baht on digital infrastructure to position itself as a regional AI hub, this underscores the urgent need for robust oversight frameworks to ensure GenAI technologies are deployed safely, securely and ethically.
"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.
Organisations must balance innovation with strong governance, adopting security architectures that account for AI's unique risks.
Proactive oversight and adaptive security controls are essential to ensuring that the benefits of AI are fully realised without compromising national security, public trust or operational integrity, he added.
The 2025 State of GenAI report is based on traffic analysis from 7,051 global enterprise customers.
According to the report, 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.
Another key finding is rising data loss incidents. GenAI-related data loss prevention incidents more than doubled, now accounting for 14% of all data security incidents.
Shadow AI has emerged as a major risk. Unauthorised, unsanctioned GenAI use, dubbed "Shadow AI", has created blind spots for IT and security teams, making it difficult to control sensitive data flows.
The top three apps used in Thailand are Grammarly (36.56%), Microsoft PowerApps (30.99%) and OpenAI ChatGPT (23.41%).
Piya Jitnimit, country manager for Thailand at Palo Alto Networks, said Thailand's public and private sectors are increasingly integrating AI to enhance operational efficiency and service innovation.
"As adoption accelerates, it is imperative that we proactively address the emerging risks associated with these technologies," he said.
Establishing a robust governance framework, ensuring ethical and secure implementation and cultivating a digitally-skilled workforce are critical to advancing Thailand's vision of becoming a regional leader in AI, he added.
The report also recommended businesses seek to safely harness the potential of GenAI.
They should establish visibility and control to gain comprehensive oversight of GenAI app usage, implementing conditional access policies and managing permission at the user and group levels.
It also suggests they safeguard sensitive data by deploying real-time content inspection with centralised policy enforcement to prevent unauthorised data exfiltration.
