2. Cyber the saviour as attacks boom
While piercing our daily lives, a glut of high-profile cyber attacks ensured cyber remained at the top of the agenda for customers in 2025.
Our countdown of the top 14 cyber incidents of the year in the eyes of UK partners included attacks on retailers M&S, Co-op and Harrods.
And this year it became personal for everyone (including those in the channel tasked with preventing the attacks).
“It became personal for me as a daily shopper on my way to and from work and therefore affected me as a customer with tills not functioning and rapidly emptying shelves,” Computacenter exec Dr Colin Williams said of May’s Co-op attack.
All this fuelled continued double-digit cyber growth for the channel. According to Canalys (part of Omdia), the top 18 cybersecurity ‘Titan’ vendors grew 14.6%, 14.3% and 12.5% year-on-year in Q1, Q2 and Q3, respectively (with over 90% of product spending travelling through the channel).
The year also saw identity security rise to the fore as it was branded “the new perimeter” for the AI era.
This dynamic was said to be the driver behind Palo Alto Networks’ move to acquire CyberArk for up to $25bn (a deal that isn’t expected to close until 2026).
“The phrase so many of us have heard now – ‘identity is the new perimeter’ – is absolutely true, and in many cases it becomes the first line of defence or first line of breach for organisations, so identity hygiene is absolutely critical,” Sophos CEO Joe Levy told IT Channel Oxygen in September as he laid out the vendor’s entry into the identity space.
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