Carolina Gomez Mena
La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday, November 30, 2025, p. 7
With the advance in the use of information and communication technologies, cyber attacks and cyber crimes of various kinds have increased in recent years, many of them driven by the malicious use of artificial intelligence (AI).
According to the United Nations (UN), at the end of 2024, more than 60 percent of the world’s population was connected to the Internet, which increases cybersecurity risks and warns that the growing cost of crimes is quantified in trillions of dollars.
According to the World Bank’s Cybersecurity Economy for Emerging Markets report, in the last decade cybercriminal incidents grew 25 percent annually in Latin America, and Mexico was among the five most affected countries, according to the UN.
Forecasts of the startup Cybersecurity Ventures indicates that the global cost of cybercrime could reach 10.5 trillion dollars this year, and with the use of AI in cyberattacks of this nature this has been enhanced.
On the eve of World Cybersecurity Day, today, November 30, José Aguilar Martínez, head of the Information Security Department in the Information Technology Directorate of the Metropolitan Autonomous University, agrees that although AI improves services and facilitates tasks from browsers and computers, it can be used to violate systems and take advantage of flaws.
Also with the use of AI, people with little technical training can be instructed to try to attack servers or take the identity (in the digital world) of another person. Furthermore, on the other hand, he said, AI can be deliberately “poisoned” to deliver false data to those who do not have experience in the subject.
On the occasion of the date, the Iberoamerican University states that in an increasingly digitally connected world, cybersecurity becomes a fundamental pillar and highlights that “in Mexico, 400 thousand people specialized in this matter are needed” to prevent and respond to cyber attacks.
In the first half of 2025 alone, the FortiGuard Labs report indicates that there were more than 35 billion attempted cyber attacks in the country (according to the Mexican cybersecurity company IQSEC there were 40 billion), Ibero details and adds that only 5 percent of these attacks have national origin, and the rest come from abroad, mainly affecting the manufacturing, government and telecommunications sectors.
